Say Anything Blog

This is a semantic argument.  It’s a real war, not matter how you parse it.  They are killing us, and we should be doing a better job of killing them.  We lose, we lose our way of life.  In light of that, some silly semantic word game is meaningless.  Mike, I think the real goal of your use of “marketing strategy” is to invalidate our President, whose foreign policy(and undoubtedly more) you dislike.  Don’t let your emotion blind you to the obvious truth.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

I’ll agree that the “war on terror” isn’t the perfect word for the struggle against Islamic terrorism, but please don’t use that as an excuse to downplay the seriousness of the struggle.

The label is just part of the American political lexicon.  Scandals always get a “-gate” attached to the end, and when we’re trying to stop a certain activity or event (drugs, poverty, etc.) we declare a “war” on it.  The “war on drugs” and the “war on poverty” for instance.

Which isn’t to say that the war on terror is anything like those debacles.  It’s just a political slogan.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

MikeA,

While you and I and the rest were doing whatever this past weekend, Don Rumsfeld was in Iraq with the troops he had sent there.  With him was Sean Hannity, whose interview with Rumsfeld can be found in part here.

I mention this because I honestly believe that there is a good deal more about Rumsfeld, and his tenure at the Pentagon, worthy of your grudging admiration than his acute respect for and command of the English language.  For example,

That’s one of the natures of a democracy. People can say what they want. They can be right. They can be wrong. They can be harmful. They can be helpful.

But we’ve survived that kind of partisan political debate. We saw it during the Revolutionary War. We saw it during the Civil War. We saw it during World War I and II. We certainly saw it during the Vietnam War, Korean War. My goodness, yes.

No, if you’re secretary of defense during a war, no war is popular, except in retrospect. They aren’t popular at the time. They’re ugly things. They’re terrible things. And people die, and people are wounded, and people are heartbroken. And there’s inevitably going to be criticism, and that goes with the territory, and I accept that…

or this,

I think that history has to look at this period as a period that is new, where there is no roadmap, where there is no guidebook that said, “Here’s how you do this,” and that an awful lot of right decisions were made.

The recognition that a terrorist can attack at any place in any location using any technique in any time of the day or night, there’s simply no way to defend in every location at every minute of the day or night against every conceivable technique. It can’t be done.

You have no choice but to go after the terrorists, the extremists, where they are. You cannot wait to be hit. And that concept was central to the president’s position, and it’s the right one.

You clearly don’t agree with the policies of this President, or those of Secretary Rumsfeld, Mike.  Okay by me.

But you have yet to offer any rational basis for taking the threat of radical Islamist terrorism less seriously than do Rumsfeld and Bush, nor have you offered any sensible alternative policies that effectively deal with that same threat.  And absent one of the other, it’s kinda hard to take your criticisms very seriously, Mike, despite your obvious respect for the English language.

I consider it more than slightly obscene that the words of a warrior like Rumsfeld are being used to justify this gross misstatement that the war on terror is “just a marketing strategy”.  It’s a slam at a fine man, a fine President, and at all those people, around the world, who have suffered and died at the hands of the terrorists, and who will continue to die until the terrorists are eliminated from our world.
Are the people dying in Southern Thailand being killed by a marketing strategy?

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

Are the people dying in Southern Thailand being killed by a marketing strategy?

R108,

Let’s not forget the non-Muslims in Somalia, the Philippines, Holland, Kashmir, Malaysia, Lebanon, Darfur, or London, England for that matter.

It seems as if the US is the only country willing to fight terrorism on any other level but in our own interest.  Other countries are fighting the terrorism in their own countries, at least to some extent(depending on the country), but the US is willing to fight terrorism in other parts of the world.  This is what makes what we are doing “The Global War on Terror”.  It’s not a marketing strategy, people, it’s above and beyond the call of narrow national interest.
Not to slight the other members of the coalition, btw, but consider this: If the US was not leading the way, what would the rest of the coalition members be doing?  This has made us the target not only for the terrorists, but for every jealous nation on Earth.
Despite his faults, our President is a very brave and courageous man for taking this on, especially when some of his own countrymen wish him to fail.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

r108...The GWOT is a marketing strategy because you don’t fight terror, you fight terrorists. It’s a catchy phrase which stirs public feelings of patriotism and sacrifice. The important thing is the fight itself and not the name of the fight but your inability to grasp a point that Mr. Rumsfeld makes quite plainly is mildly surprising.

Bat One...I take the threat of radical Islamic terrorism very seriously. What I don’t take seriously is the notion that the Wahabi sect is representative of the Islamic religion and that the West has something to fear from mainstream Islam. I also don’t take Iraq seriously as a centre of jihadism, a position which contributed to the invasion of Iraq. I hope that offers some clarity.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

MikeA: You play a meaningless word game here; it’s a real war, no matter how much you want to deny it out of your dislike for our President.  Trying to cherry-pick Rumsfeld to serve your agenda is low.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

r108...cherry picking? It’s funny how some word games are meaningless while others are packed overflowing with meaning...you should have quit while you were ahead.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

r108...did you read this part of my comment? How brazen we become…

The important thing is the fight itself and not the name of the fight…

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

MikeA: I did read that part, but your continued insistence on the “marketing strategy” label drowned it out.  Of course, I agree with that particular statement of yours, but not the bulk of what you write on this subject.  I guess it helps you to characterize someone who disagrees with you as “brazen”...I certainly don’t shrink from a fight, so I’ll take that as a compliment.

BTW, “cherry-picking” is the choosing of one thing a person said that supports your agenda, while ignoring the great bulk of what they have said(as Bat clearly illustrated) that disagrees with your position.  It’s in the same vein as the “classified” memo from last week.  True, but misleading about what the man really stands for.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

MikeA: You wrote:

The GWOT is a marketing strategy because you don’t fight terror, you fight terrorists.

I disagree with you on this point, as well.  Terrorism has become an overall strategy with the radical Islamists now. The goal of that strategy is to make us give up and run away by deceiving us on a daily basis.  Its weapon is phony news reports, faked photos, staged “incidents” and the elimination of any good news in the fight against the terrorists. In addition to the usual murdering and hiding amongst civilians, they are now waging a very sophisticated propaganda campaign in the news media, with the complicity, unwitting or not, of our own MSM.  The GWOT also involves defeating this aspect of terrorism as well; it is no longer strictly a military operation.  I think that is just as “global” as any use of conventional weaponry, and maybe even more important.
Probably the worst mistake anyone can do in time of war is to underestimate the enemy.  It is best to make the correct estimate, of course, but if one is wrong, it should be to overestimate, rather than underestimate, the strength and resolve of our enemy.
You may choose to call this a “marketing strategy” if you like, but this is really a deadly serious business.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

From your post:

Terror is a weapon of choice for extremists who are trying to destabilize regimes and (through) a small group of clerics, impose their dark vision on all the people they can control. So ‘war on terror’ is a problem for me.

That is certainly true of the struggle in the ME, but the war on the US and our allies is quite different.
Although, with the last election, the part about “destabilizing regimes” might have some truth to it, or at least “destabilizing a duly elected administration”.
Their clerics aren’t a real problem here, though, and the “control” might come later if they continue to make propaganda inroads on our political culture.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

r108

I guess it helps you to characterize someone who disagrees with you as “brazen”

Not at all...I just think it takes a lot of guts for you to complain about “word games.”

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

Not at all...I just think it takes a lot of guts for you to complain about “word games.”

So, calling you to account for your words is now “word games”?  Ah doan theenk so!
I say what I mean and mean what I say, which is what bothers you so much about me.  You can’t have it both ways.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

You can’t have it both ways.

I can’t but it seems you can...what a sad little world.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

I can’t but it seems you can...what a sad little world.

Instead of a vague insult, how about a solid example?

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

Why don’t you just get bent instead...I’m done.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

John Stuart Mill

MikeA: I’m not surprised; all I did was call you on your statement, and you seem to have a lot of trouble admitting your mistake and moving on.  Or, maybe you meant what you wrote, and can’t stand being called on it.  In any case, blaming me won’t change anything you did.

Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals.

MikeAdamson:

The GWOT is a marketing strategy because you don’t fight terror, you fight terrorists.

More technically, as it is used in common speech, the Global War on Terror is a rubric.  It is short hand for a conflict between Islamic extremists who are willing to use terror to achieve their political ends, and Western democracies that are trying to put an end to this virulent brand of extremism. 

Rubrics are descriptors of processes that are short hand for how the mechanics of those processes work.  Global War on Terror(ism) suggests that the nature of the conflict is global (it involves all nations), it is a war (hopefully you will stipulate that), and it is “on terror(ism)” in the sense that it is attempting to address the root causes of that terrorism.