[Infowarrior] - 'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name

[Richard Forno]

'Global War On Terror' Is Given New Name
Bush's Phrase Is Out, Pentagon Says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032402818_pf.html

By Scott Wilson and Al Kamen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 25, 2009; A04

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the phrase  
"global war on terror," a signature rhetorical legacy of its  
predecessor.

In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense  
Department's office of security review noted that "this administration  
prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on  
Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

The memo said the direction came from the Office of Management and  
Budget, the executive-branch agency that reviews the public testimony  
of administration officials before it is delivered.

Not so, said Kenneth Baer, an OMB spokesman.

"There was no memo, no guidance," Baer said yesterday. "This is the  
opinion of a career civil servant."

Coincidentally or not, senior administration officials had been  
publicly using the phrase "overseas contingency operations" in a war  
context for roughly a month before the e-mail was sent.

Peter Orszag, the OMB director, turned to it Feb. 26 when discussing  
Obama's budget proposal at a news conference: "The budget shows the  
combined cost of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and any other  
overseas contingency operations that may be necessary."

And in congressional testimony last week, Craig W. Duehring, assistant  
secretary of the Air Force for manpower, said, "Key battlefield  
monetary incentives has allowed the Air Force to meet the demands of  
overseas contingency operations even as requirements continue to grow."

Monday's Pentagon e-mail was prompted by congressional testimony that  
Lt. Gen. John W. Bergman, head of the Marine Forces Reserve, intends  
to give today. The memo advised Pentagon personnel to "please pass  
this onto your speechwriters and try to catch this change before  
statements make it to OMB."

Baer said, "I have no reason to believe that ['global war on terror']  
would be stricken" from future congressional testimony.

The Bush administration adopted the phrase soon after the Sept. 11,  
2001, attacks to capture the scope of the threat it perceived and the  
military operations that would be required to confront it.

In an address to Congress nine days after the attacks, President  
George W. Bush said, "Our war on terror will not end until every  
terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

But critics abroad and at home, including some within the U.S.  
military, said the terminology mischaracterized the nature of the  
enemy and its abilities. Some military officers said, for example,  
that classifying al-Qaeda and other anti-American militant groups as  
part of a single movement overstated their strength.

Early in Bush's second term, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld  
promoted a change in wording to "global struggle against violent  
extremism," or GSAVE. Bush rejected the shift and never softened his  
position that "global war" accurately describes the conflict that the  
United States is fighting.

Last month, the International Commission of Jurists urged the Obama  
administration to drop the phrase "war on terror." The commission said  
the term had given the Bush administration "spurious justification to  
a range of human rights and humanitarian law violations," including  
detention practices and interrogation methods that the International  
Committee of the Red Cross has described as torture.

John A. Nagl, the former Army officer who helped write the military's  
latest counterinsurgency field manual, said the phrase "was enormously  
unfortunate because I think it pulled together disparate organizations  
and insurgencies."

"Our strategy should be to divide and conquer rather than make of  
enemies more than they are," said Nagl, now president of the Center  
for a New American Security, a defense policy think tank in  
Washington. "We are facing a number of different insurgencies around  
the globe -- some have local causes, some of them are transnational.  
Viewing them all through one lens distorts the picture and magnifies  
the enemy."