The War on Terror or the war on terror? Posted by Shadi Hamid

In last week's Democratic debate, Brian Williams asked the candidates: "do you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror?" Although I didn't notice it at the time, Edwards apparently didn't raise his hand. First of all, that's pretty gutsy, and you've got to give him credit for taking a potentially dangerous stand. I would have raised my hand, but that's probably because I interpret the question differently than Edwards did.

To the objection of some, I personally still use the phrasing "war on terror" when I write, because there is, in fact, a war on terror to be fought (i.e. there are people who want to kill us and we have to figure out a way to defeat them). But, at the same time, I purposely de-capitalize the phrase in order to distinguish it from Bush's "War on Terror," which is an altogether a different war, and one that has little do with actually fighting terrorists. So, I guess it depends: when Brian Williams asked the question, was he asking about a "global war on terror" or a/the "Global War on Terror" (the prepositions also might confuse matters)? 

Comments

[Nick Edwards]

This post also reminds me of the "rebranding" the war discussion that started a couple years ago and still persists. For example,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0728/dailyUpdate.html

[Don Bacon]

Shadi,

As an agent of the media you are now part of the threat. Been nice knowin' ya, buddy, but we'd better stop meeting like this. I'm just being careful, you understand. Nothing personal.

[Ari Melber]

Shadi, Edwards has continued to press his case against GWOT, and it's getting some positive receptions from voters. In this piece, I wrote about it and happened to cite the same CSMonitor story that Nick Edwards mentions above:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=191098

[Poetry]

We may not solve warfare or famine in your time. But the cure of all disease may be within our grasp. Imagine the if the trillions spent on "Wars of Choice" or "Wars against a concept" was spent testing every natural and artifical substance known to man against every disease known to man. Imagine if we spent the remainder on determinining the molecular structure and sequencing the genes of every disease so that we could construct cures that while harmless and inert to ourselves, are deadly and irrestible to the viruses, anti-viruses, and bacterias that plague us. War is not the triumph of God. War is the failure of men. Though there are necessary wars such as World War II, most wars could be prevented. For instance, if we stopped buying oil from Saudi Arabia, the money that finances terrorism would dry up and the so called "War Against Terror" would be over. It is instructive to note that no major politician has as his chief goal, destroying terrorism in this way. Perhaps they don't really want it to stop....And besides, every major politican is getting bought by foreign oil interests and domestic big oil. We could easily use coal and nuclear energy to be free of those who fund terrorism. Unfortunately, the politicians have yet to find a way to get paid if we switch to domestic energy sources. Every pundit who says we can't switch to domestic energy is also on they pay roll of big oil and foreign oil interests.

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