Dems banish phrase “war on terror”

posted at 1:25 pm on April 4, 2007 by Bryan
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I’ve been watching this story bubble around for a day or two: The Democrats have decided that “war on terror” is doubleplus ungood, so it’s out of the 2008 budget. So is “the long war.”

Frankly, “war on terror” has never been my favorite phrase either. “War on Islamic fascism,” “war on Islamic theocracy,” “war against al Qaeda” or any similar phrases would work better and be a bit clearer. But, “war on terror” has been the operative phrase since just after 9-11 and by now everyone knows what it means. Which is apparently why the Dems have banished its use in the 2008 budget.

The House Armed Services Committee is banishing the global war on terror from the 2008 defense budget.

This is not because the war has been won, lost or even called off, but because the committee’s Democratic leadership doesn’t like the phrase.

A memo for the committee staff, circulated March 27, says the 2008 bill and its accompanying explanatory report that will set defense policy should be specific about military operations and “avoid using colloquialisms.”

The “global war on terror,” a phrase first used by President Bush shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., should not be used, according to the memo. Also banned is the phrase the “long war,” which military officials began using last year as a way of acknowledging that military operations against terrorist states and organizations would not be wrapped up in a few years.

Committee staff members are told in the memo to use specific references to specific operations instead of the Bush administration’s catch phrases. The memo, written by Staff Director Erin Conaton, provides examples of acceptable phrases, such as “the war in Iraq,” the “war in Afghanistan, “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing military operations throughout the world.”

“There was no political intent in doing this,” said a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified. “We were just trying to avoid catch phrases.”

Riiiight. No political intent. But the words used to describe a war are inherently political, as war is inherently political. It’s politics by other means, as the saying goes.

Particularly wrong-headed is banishing the phrase “the long war,” since that’s both accurate and puts this or that current theater of the war (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) into proper context. Winning or losing one theater or another doesn’t end “the war.” It’s all part of “the long war.” That’s not a catch-phrase, Democrats. It’s just the truth of the situation. Banishing that phrase divides the various parts of the war apart. That’s a political act, meant to signal that the Democrats don’t believe Iraq has anything to do with the ongoing fighting against Islamic radicals elsewhere. It’s comforting to think that way, since it minimizes the global nature of the threat, but it’s dangeroulsy wrong. The violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and Sudan and Thailand and the Philippines and elsewhere, all with Islamic roots, is connected. It’s all part of “the long war,” or “the war on terror,” or even “the long war on terror.” And it’s all connected to the creeping dhimmitude in the UK, the “youth” violence in France, and the rising threat of sharia in Minnesota. All part of the same war, because the ideology behind it all is the same.

As to when and where the Democrats are getting the idea that banishing “war on terror” and “the long war” serves some useful purpose, well, I question the timing. And the source.

That link goes to a video of Rosie O’Donnell. It should be familiar to all of you by now. Are the Democrats getting their talking points from her? Like her, they play to the applause of the ignorant, so that’s not as much of a stretch as it might seem.

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