The War On...
Yesterday, Politico's Arena asked its contributors whether or not the phrase 'war on terror' mattered. The phrase was frequently used by President Bush and recently by President Obama. Could a simple choice of words have ramifications at home and abroad?
Internationally, the phrasing may, unintentionally, having an unwanted effect upon those to whom the words are directed. Joseph Nye Jr, professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, noted that "[w]hen British MI 5 interrogated arrested terrorists, they found that the words “war on terror” were heard as “war against Islam” and that helped terrorist recruiters."
Yousef Munayyer of The Jerusalem Fund argues that the term creates political consequences within the US. "The problem with declaring a war on anything ( other than states ) is that if the war is not clearly won, you have failed. Terrorism is not going away and has been around for millennia, so declaring a war on it is political disaster."
Beyond our allies or enemy's feelings internationally, and even beyond our own countries opinion, using the phrase 'the war on terror' allows the American Government to make an excuse. An excuse for still being in Iraq, an excuse for weak Afganistan policy, but mostly an excuse to house long-term detainees at Guantanamo Bay and perform possibly illegal interrogation techniques upon them. If by eliminating 'the war on terror' from our national vocabulary, we eliminate on more fasade for the government to hide behind when dealing with detainees, it needs to go.
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