My blood boils

Heads up, please. We’re not fighting the GWOT (Global War on Terror) anymore. Now we’re engaged in a GSAVE (Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism).

According to the new product line trotted out by Rummy (in news conferences) and General Myers (at the National Press Club, yesterday), the president’s thinking has evolved since 9/11 and now we’re “addressing the ideological part of the war that deals with how the terrorists recruit and indoctrinate new terrorists.” (according to Douglas Feith).

Myers told the National Press Club that he had…

objected to the use of the term ‘war on terrorism’ before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution.” He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that “terror is the method they use."

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require “all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities’ national power.” The solution is “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military,” he concluded.

Apparently the flypaper strategy is now defunct because...well, it’s patently obvious to most people that the former Global War On Terror was spilling out of its designated boundaries. The flypaper was losing its stick. And, I’m assuming, they’ve recognized that when something goes boom here, they’d better have already moved us away from thinking in terms of fighting over there so we don’t have to do it here. No, it’s a global struggle against violent extremism now and it’s wrong think of it as a military kind of war.

Mr Rumsfeld’s spokesman, Lawrence DiRita explained, “The president then said we were going to use all the means of national power and influence to defeat this enemy. We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

So update your thinking and stop focusing on Afghanistan and Iraq, you sillies. That isn’t where the War On Terror is, that we’ve somehow understandably focused on. In fact, terrorism is just a method the baddies use. We have to get inside the minds of the terrorists and understand why they do what they do. We have to use diplomatic, economic, and political strategies to figure this out. Military action isn’t the main focus. Got that?

I know it is indelicate to mention this now, but isn’t that what we stupid liberals have been saying for the past 4 years? Didn’t they call us traitors for thinking that way? And now after blowing up thousands of innocent Iraqis and taking their country to the brink of Civil War, losing nearly 2000 of our own troops, while maiming another several thousand, they’ve finally decided to look reality in the face? And now they’re telling us, in a rather paternalistic and patronizing way, that, while it’s understandable that we’re focused on military action, that’s not really what it’s been all about? Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t really the central fronts in a War on Terror that doesn’t exist. Won’t the troops, who are getting their asses shot at and blown off, be thrilled to hear that?

How stupid do they think we are?

Don’t answer that.