The end of the 'War on Terror'

That's right, folks. The War on Terror, that battle against a guerilla tactic, is drawing to a close.

Seems they're now calling it the global struggle against extremism^tm.

Or the global struggle against violent extremism^tm.

Or global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization^tm.

The key word to notice here is struggle. See that the word war is missing. Apparently, this is on purpose. Get used to hearing it.

Seriously. It is more descriptive, and more accurate. It also suggests that a change in policy has taken place. You don't recast a war as a struggle unless you are trying to de-emphasize overt military tactics.

From the International Herald Tribune:

In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the country's top military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.

Administration officials say the earlier phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution."

He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremism, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded.

Oh... I'm feeling a gloat coming on. He's talking the language of 'root causes.'

Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President George W. Bush's senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Bush's own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Emphasis is mine. Frankly, you can see some of the evolution. We know there's lots of diplomacy and clandestine support for democratic movements going on (well, maybe not with Venezuela, where it seemed to support a coup at one point). This is supeior to warfare: There's less money involved, less death, less pain. The 'axis of evil' language has slipped away, and we haven't seen the anticipated selective bombing of Iran (Source: Hersh) that some hawks have been supposedly seeking (we may yet, though the reported Iranian infiltration of Iraq poses a problem there).

There's still military involvement, but it's more clandestine. This represents a more symmetrical response to the threat level -- which is to say, spying, infiltration, the odd murder and bombing... The Hersh article linked to above from last January has more.

Rumsfeld spoke in the new terms on Friday when he addressed an audience in Annapolis, Maryland, for the retirement ceremony of Admiral Vern Clark as chief of naval operations. Rumsfeld described America's efforts as it "wages the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization."

The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration's strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Bush's recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas.

"It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative."

The language shift also comes at a time when Bush, with a new appointment for one of his most trusted aides, Karen Hughes, is trying to bolster the State Department's efforts at public diplomacy.

Lawrence Di Rita, Rumsfeld's spokesman, said the change in language "is not a shift in thinking, but a continuation of the immediate post-9/11 approach."

"The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy," Di Rita said. "We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq."

The thing is, the White House has been concentrating on Iraq for a long time, force-feeding us one justification after another: The WMD threat, the flypaper strategy, the democracy strategy, the thumping-our-chest-and-proving-how-powerful-we-are strategy... No wonder most look at Iraq as being the war on terror. As many progressives have pointed out, this war has little to do with any war on terror. If Iraq was to ever become a stable democratic society (that offensive 'flypaper strategy' isn't exactly working to that benefit), a shining beacon on some Middle Eastern hill, it'll take years, decades even. Leaning on that hopeful outcome will do nothing in the meantime to cool the radicals' heels. As we have been seeing, it's actually been making a few.

Is this entire venture is being recast as a struggle, then this is signal for something longer term and lower key than what we've been seeing, I think.

The Iraq war, and the ongoing slow-motion civil war we are now likely seeing there has demonstrated to many, friend and foe alike, the limitations of forceful nation building.

No, it's time for longer-term thinking and subtlety - that nuance thing.

I'll give one of Rumsfeld's guys the last word here:

Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in an interview that if America's efforts were limited to "protecting the homeland and attacking and disrupting terrorist networks, you're on a treadmill that is likely to get faster and faster with time." The key to "ultimately winning the war," he said, "is addressing the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists."