The Global War on Error

"In a rhetorical shift last week, the Bush administration unveiled a new name for its worldwide war against an abstraction. The old moniker 'Global War on Terror' (or GWOT) has been exchanged for the new label, the 'Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism' (or G-SAVE). The results for America and the world, sadly, will be the same.

"This is not a case, as Shakespeare might have said, of a rose by any other name smelling as sweet. The United States is not engaged in a twilight struggle against a concept. The United States is fighting Al Qaeda, an organization with political and military goals, one that declared war on America in 1996 and attacked its homeland in 2001. Bin Laden's organization and its network of loosely affiliated cells and followers must be beaten back politically, diplomatically, ideologically - and militarily.

"But almost from the moment the Twin Towers fell, President Bush has mischaracterized the enemy we face and failed to grasp the nature of the conflict we must fight and win. On September 20, 2001, only nine days after the Al Qaeda attacks in the U.S., President Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and the nation. In his first and fullest articulation of the 'Way of Life' thesis, Bush explained:

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

"This meaningless drumbeat from the White House hasn't stopped since. In June 2002, Bush stated that 'we use all the tools at our disposal to deal with these nations that hate America and hate our freedoms.' Dick Cheney put it simply last year, saying 'the terrorists hate our country, they hate our freedom, they hate everything we stand for in the world.'

"The Pentagon's own Defense Science Board on Strategic Communications, however, sees the struggle -- and our prospects for success -- much differently. In a report whose release was squelched until after the 2004 presidential campaign, the panel stated, 'Muslims do not hate our freedoms, but rather they hate our policies ...'"
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