Best Of
Recent comments
- Ummm, no.
The rightness or
2 weeks 17 hours ago - I recently saw the re-trial
2 weeks 19 hours ago - I am a conservative who did
2 weeks 20 hours ago - Amen.
We're called to serve
2 weeks 3 days ago - I have to disagree with your
2 weeks 6 days ago - To break up the monotony of
3 weeks 3 days ago - Although I am a conservative
3 weeks 4 days ago - Been reading your blogs,
3 weeks 6 days ago - Excellent post, Will.
3 weeks 6 days ago - Thanks for the reminder,
3 weeks 6 days ago
Friends of GWH
Subscribe
Recent blog posts
- Evangelicals and the Future of Politics: Wise Words from Joel Hunter
- Election 2008: The Day After
- The 2008 Good Will Hinton Voting Guide
- Dumb Reasons To Not Vote For Barack Obama
- The Immorality of the Housing Bailout
- Random Non-Partisan Thought of the Day
- Good: Bad on the Election and Voting
- Good Will Hinton Interviews Eric Metaxas
- Good Will Hinton Interviews Bridget Kibbey
- More On Obama and the Ayers Non-Story
Recommended Blogs
Who's online
User login
About Will Hinton
Bio
Will Hinton is a consultant and blogger who got his start with the blog, Dignan's 75 Year Plan. Over the past few years, Will has used his blog as a platform to explore running for Congress, spearheading volunteer efforts for Hurricane Katrina relief, and challenging common perceptions about politics.
Will has developed a reputation in the blogosphere for reasonable and gracious dialogue on contentious political and religious topics.
Will is also a guest contributor at PeachPundit, RedBlueChristian, Nation-Building, RedState, and DailyKos.
Will lives in Atlanta with his wife and two daughters.
John Edwards: Move Past 'War on Terror'
John Edwards came out today in a defense policy speech and said that the "global war on terror" is simply a Bush administration ideological doctrine and that there is no GWOT. I can already visualize the mouth-frothing on right-wing sites and the "Amen, he is speaking truth to power" silliness on left-wing sites.
However, this is a worthwhile discussion that deserves some serious thought and dialogue. Is it possible that we can provide a platform here to have that conversation? Prove me right folks.
Comments
Setting the terms
To have a war on terror, you have to have a consistent definition of what terror is and some clear intelligence that indicates a coordination of terrorist activist across groups, such that if the war was won, terrorism would actually stop. I don't think we have that. I think terrorism is a tactic used by a variety of non-state groups seeking to disrupt existing state and world power systems, not always with the goal of claiming that power for themselves. Some of these groups are coordinated and many are not. The problem with declaring a war on terror is that it fails to name the enemy. If you don't name the enemy, then you don't know who you are fighting and you won't know when or if you win.
Dustin Kidd
Dustin Kidd
At the risk of being "silly"
I have to say I agree with Edwards. I never thought a politician of that stature would actually say that publically, but there never has been a 'war on terror'. I do believe the Bush administration knows fully well the political power of being in a war and they tried to use their to their advantage (and did so pretty well), but there never truly was a war. There may have been heightened efforts to stop terrorism and that's cool, but the entire notion was pretty ridiculous anyways. Going to war with the people who caused the 9-11 attacks? They all died in those attacks. 9-11 was a tragedy and terrorism is evil and work should be done to protect ourselves and try to stop terrorist when we can, but throwing the "war" label on it was shameless politics and nothing else.
Definitions, please?
So, if what we are doing is not "war", what is it?
War, as defined by the OED begins with these:
1 a. Hostile contention by means of armed forces, carried on between nations, states, or rulers, or between parties in the same nation or state; the employment of armed forces against a foreign power, or against an opposing party in the state.
b. transf. and fig. Applied poet. or rhetorically to any kind of active hostility or contention between living beings, or of conflict between opposing forces or principles.
How about d. open war: avowed active hostility.
and I would suggest that a cessation of hostilities, sometimes known as peace, might indicate the end of this - whatever it is.
Kate Pitrone
Dictionaries are Dangerous
Here's the problem. When the administration refers to a global war on terror, they don't mean option d, they mean option a. They are claiming that terror is a clear, identifiable political force that can be attacked and defeated.
But the reality is that "terror" is not unique to a particular state, political power, ruler, or group of people. It's a tactic and the various people engaging in this tactic are widely dispersed and not particularly coordintated. In fact, many terrorists are also at war with other terrorists.
Saying we're in a global war on terror is not just lazy or inaccurate, it is misleading and manipulative. Terror is always on the move and has no defeatable state center. So once you declare a war on terror, you will always be waging that war. Terror has no end. It cannot be defeated. Which means that for all the adminstration's claims that this is option a (hostile contention between powers), it is really option d. It is active hostility with no fixed target, no center, and no way out. An open war that cannot close.
But particular groups who are engaging in terrorism do have identifiable centers of power. These groups have names and they have leaders. We can engage in a war against them if we actually name them and fix them as our target.
Now, just to complete the semantics. Option a is still problematic because the groups we're talking about don't fit anything on that list. But that list was made to describe the modern era and the periods before that. A thousand years ago, the reference to nations wouldn't have ocurred, but history forced its addition. History is now forcing us to add non-state forces (or something like it) to this list. These historically peculiar forces can be defeated (and they can also have their victories), but only if they are named and not cloaked behind this murky term "terror."
Dustin Kidd
Dustin Kidd
Another problem with dictionaries
Another problem with using a dictionary to define "war" is that it takes the discussion outside the constitutional framework of our government and discusses it in the abstract. If you are a proponent of strict construction, and do not see the constitution as a living document, the definition of war is limited to that which applied in 1782, when war was a term of art with a meaning far more limited than that which we give it today. A dictionary is irrelevant to a proponent of strict construction.
r.johnson
Defenseless
That is what we are against terrorism, if we follow your strict constructionist definition of "war". We aren't supposed to be retaining a standing army, either, but how do we get on in a modern world without one? We get around the problem with annual appropriations by Congress. We had better get around the strict definition of war, because we have been attacked, more than the one major time, too.
If we are going to go to strict constructionist definitions of our government, hang on while we dismantle the structure of U.S. government as we know it today. (I am not really opposed to that, by the way.)
Kate Pitrone
You missed my point.
Kate,
You missed my point. Dustin was noting the problem with definitions, and I merely added that these definitions were being discussed in the abstract, without regard to constitutional interpretation. Congress is given the power to declare war - something the executive branch is expressly forbidden to do under our constitution- and while a strict constructionist may find anything short of a formal declaration of war by Congress to be unconstitutional, that person's definition of war is going to vary greatly from you or others. Dictionary definitions are irrelevant, and GWB declaring "war" is fundamentally flawed.
(And no, I am not advocating a strict constriction approach. As I have said on my own site before, strict construction is one of many jurisprudential doctrines that a given judge uses to reach a decision in a case. I beleive the constitution is a living document. If nothing else, this post on "war" highlights that those who call for strict construction on social issues or on search and seizure, etc. are noticably silent when it comes to the meaning of waging and declaring war.)
Lastly, we are not defenseless against terrorism if a strict constructionist's definition of war is adopted. A strict constructionist would either say that our actions do not constitute "war" (and as you point out the claim would be met with skepticism), or that this is not an apt use of the term "war." In either case, it does not follow that we would be defenseless against terrorism. Your response assumes that the only way to fight terrorism is with an armed response.
r.johnson
apology
I apologize for missing your point.
However, I do not see how we are going to respond to armed terrorists without being armed and prepared with an armed defense, ourselves.
Kate Pitrone
So is Reality
Then the problem is a strategic one. We are at war with something difficultly amorphous. Our military is trying to adjust to - isn't this called asymmetric war? Anyway, it would not be the first war in history that went on for a long time. In this case, precisely because the enemy is not consolidated into one geographic area. We got good at geographic war, humankind got good at it, I mean. Ideological and religious wars are just different, but not to call them wars begs the question as to what they should be called.
I think we do name the enemy: Al Qaeda, for example. I wish that simple naming was all that had to be done in terms of identification of a military target. Apparently it is not all that easy.
Kate Pitrone
al-qaeda in iraq
I thought the Iraq war was not about al-qaeda. There were fewer links to Iraq than there were to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. However, these people are counted as part of the coalition of the willing.
However, the GWOT has been a terrorist recruiters wet dream. Our prescence in Iraq has been a magnet for current and would-be terrorists to come to Iraq, as well as provided our armed forces for target practice.
You've only shifted the problem
onto "al-Qaeda," which isn't a set, stable organization that can be identified, but a shifting ideological allegiance.
The guys in Iraq or London don't go have a meeting with Osama and get deputized; they declare themselves al-Qaeda and have at it.
So saying we're at war with al-Qaeda isn't any kind of improvement over the "war on terror" language. The only thing it does is specify the particular ideology of the combatants without identifying them.
Militant Islam
Isn't the War on Terror just code for our stance against militant Islam?
I'm with you Marc
The moniker War on Terror is silly. You can't declare war on Terror. It is a concept, not a person/group.
War on Terror is to fighting militant Islam like War on Drive-bys is to fighting gangs.
However, one can't declare on Islam either. First, on a conceptual question again, but most importantly as a public relations maneuver. To say publicly that America is at war with Muslims, even militant Muslims, put the 99% of the Muslims in a bind. Either they support those that cause death and violence and death in the name of their God, or they sell out their brothers in the faith. It is a no win situation for them, and ultimately for America.
I'd be ok with Global War on Extremists. That would also include the KKK, environmental terrorists, abortion doctor killers, etc.
However, are we ready to be at war with all those folks?
This is why "war" isn't the right word for this
"War" used to have an effectively small and precise definition. Two nations (or would-be nations) in all out, win-at-all-costs, sacrifice everything battle against each other. Being in a war changed your mindframe about life in general and how you live it. It made sense to view things differently in the midst of war and it made sense to be willing to change things to support that war (like your consumption of resources or your willingness to kill a stranger) and it made sense to not mess with things during a war (like your national leader). It's not just a "fight" or an "effort" or even an "attack" - it's much grander and more all encompassing.
But Bush & Co. have thrown around the word "war" to now describe multiple things that don't really deserve such a moniker, yet they want America and the world to accept that these are really wars and we should treat life like we're truly in war-times.
We're treating the word "war" like what we've done with the word "love". It used to mean something that was at the pinnacle and only should be used when it truly fits and using it changed it everything. Now we 'love' tacos and Sanjaya and Captain Jack Sparrow and hair colors.
Not the first, not the last
Bush & Co are not the first to misuse 'war', as timothy notes, nor will they be the last, but I agree that the use of the word is thrown around to describe things it really does not apply to.
r.johnson
In a word, yes
Seems clear enough...although all this confusion is eerily reminiscent of a period in our not-so-distant past.
I personally blame the confusion, such as it is, not on the neocon cabal but on this son-of-gun.
Well Done
Timothy,
I agree. I think this is where the abuse of the term began.
C'mon.....
Johnson properly used it as a metaphor. He didn't call for secret wire taps or trial-less prison for American citizens.
By contrast, that's exactly what Bush has done (and many of his supporters would go further). We may understand "war on terra" as code; they certainly don't. Hence the call to ditch the metaphor because the dim don't understand that it isn't literal.
More confusion
Your concern for the dim is touching, but the dim may not be so dim after all if they take, at least sometimes, the “war” part literally--for obvious reasons.
That proves out Edwards's point
The position of the many on the right is something like, "War is a metaphor, except for when we don't want it to be."
That leads to bad politics and incoherent policy.
back to "problems with the Bush doctrine"
John Edwards misses the point. Their is a global war on terror. The US and some of allies are making a coordinated military effort [war] against terrorist groups [terror]. Bush stated that this war is similar to the war on totalitarian regimes in the 1940's.
Bush misses the point b.c. although Japan, Germany, and Italy were totalitarian regimes, we declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. We didn't go after every totalitarian regimes, most notably the Soviet Union. We haven't declared war on anyone.
It is a significant difference in the sense that this an open-ended, non-declared war. In that sense, Americans don't know what to expect from this effort. The Bush administration, however, claims all sorts of powers "because this is a war".
I wish Congress had the will to stop what is going on. In the same way, I wish more presidential candidates from the party I've voted for in the past had the spine to call the GWOT like I see it.
Oh, yes we do!
"It is a significant difference in the sense that this is an open-ended, non-declared war. In that sense, Americans don't know what to expect from this effort."
An open-ended, non-declared war is EXACTLY what we endured in Viet Nam from the arrival of "advisors" in 1958 to our departure in 1973.
Most Americans over the age of about 35 know all too well what to expect of such "informal" military adventures.
As to the center of this thread... fighting a "war on terror" is like having the flu and declaring war on sneezing.
TheOldMan
Post new comment