From the Washington Post:
Former State Department counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson reported on his blog yesterday that the Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT, or The WOT, “may still be alive.”
A couple months ago, our colleague, Susan B. Glasser, reported that the Bush administration was undertaking a major review of its strategy on counterterrorism, and that officials wanted to change the name GWOT to something like GSAVE — Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. That would take into account the changed nature of the battle against international terrorism.
“GWOT is catchy,” a senior administration official said then, “but there may be a better way to describe it.”
In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld 10 days ago spoke about a “global struggle against violent extremism [GSAVE].”
Apparently nobody told President Bush. At a White House meeting of senior officials Monday, Johnson wrote, “Bush reportedly said he was not in favor of the new term… In fact, he said, ‘no one checked with me.’ That comment brought an uncomfortable silence to the assembled group of pooh-bahs. The president insisted it was still a war as far as he is concerned.”
By yesterday, Rumsfeld was back to GWOT in his prepared remarks to a Dallas business group.
So we’re back to warring against method. Yeah, George Delano is going to be ranked up there with Alexander, Napoleon and J. Freaking Caesar, isn’t he.
Forget the Vietnam comparisons. I’m beginning to get the idea that Vietnam is going to look like a success story compared with this historical debacle. No amount of low-level jihadist-killing in Iraq is going to accomplish anything whilst the president is saluting the accession of his good friend, King Abdullah, to the head of the Wahhabist House of Saud.
Meanwhile, we lost 21 of our best in three days this week. I’d be surprised if we lost that many troops to combat in the German and Japanese occupations combined. Unsurprisingly, you don’t hear a lot about those historical comparisons anymore from the administration’s cheerleaders, do you.