Does the administration’s plan to
rename the “global war on terror” to the
“global struggle against violent extremism” strike anybody else as about the
lamest thing since Jerry Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” (WIN) campaign in 1974?
Where do I even start with this? For one thing, as the 9/11 Commission
Report said (on page 362), we’re not fighting against a generic evil, we are
fighting against Islamist terrorism (its phrase). To obscure this fact keeps
us from coming up with effective strategies against it. The administration
is afraid to speak the plain truth. How can we fight this war if we’re too
afraid to name the enemy?
Moreover, the Times story today says the new label is meant to convey the
idea that we have to wage an ideological struggle against the Unmentionable
V.E.’s. Here we are four years after 9/11, and it’s just now occurring to
these people that we’re in an ideological war too?! Will we have to wait for
2009 for them to officially notice that the extreme ideology driving the
extremists is Islamic?
Anyway, with a nod to the movie “Heathers,” I think the White House should
send Karen Hughes out to announce the new “Violent Extremism — Don’t Do
It!” campaign. Boy, that’d settle the hash of the splodey-dopes for sure.