Debating the proper label for this conflict is a hardy perennial of national security professionals and arm-chair experts. The arrival of a new President, however, makes this debate especially timely. Many pundits have urged that the next administration end the global war on terror (GWOT), meaning it should stop calling it a war and relabel it as something else.The Bush Administration flirted with this idea and briefly considered calling it the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism but it found it too difficult to abruptly change acronyms in mid-stream. Much of the debate over labeling and metaphors masquerades and even obscures a deeper debate over policy. But getting the metaphor right does matter. My own view remains what it was a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks: this is best viewed as another Cold War. I have yet to read any critique that effectively rebuts the points I made in that article. That said, I think the Obama Administration would benefit from putting analogy debates behind them and it may be that relabeling -- or simply letting the GWOT label wither from lack of use -- could allow it to focus the debate on policy rather than analogies. What advice would I give Obama? Call it a long global struggle like the Cold War, long global struggle for short. What would you call it?
Bill: Counter-terrorism, pure and simple; there is no "war" on terrorism or terror or even al-Qaeda and to pronounce that there is is to merely makes warriors out of criminals. If a terrorist act occurs, it isn't a lost battle in a war; it is an occasion for the government to ask itself which elements of its intelligence, early warning, security, or military efforts failed, and they have to be looked at in their entirety. This is not only a sensible shift but one that I imagine President Obama could articulate with great eloquence.
