By Mike Nizza
INSERT DESCRIPTIONCharles Allen, under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Homeland Security Department, argues against the phrase “war on terror.” (Photo: Homeland Security Department)
During his commencement address to Air Force Academy graduates on Wednesday, President Bush made a fairly uncontroversial declaration. “The war on terror,” he said, “will dominate your military careers.” But will it always have the same name?
This morning in Financial Times, the Homeland Security Department’s top intelligence official became the latest prominent leader to say that the phrase should be dropped. “It is interpreted in the Muslim world as a war on Islam and we don’t need this,” Under Secretary Charles E. Allen said, adding that it spreads “animus” far beyond the enemy.
He was relatively late to taking sides in this public debate — the list of opponents includes Britain, the House budget committee, folks on the campaign trail and the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — but just in time for a reinvigorated discussion within the U.S. government on tweaking the rhetoric of war.
The discussion surfaced in two memos: The Homeland Security Department’s “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims” [pdf] and the National Counterterrorism Center titled “Words that Work and Words that Don’t” [pdf].
“Words matter,” the Homeland Security memo declared. “The terminology the [U.S. government] uses should convey the magnitude of the threat we face, but also avoid inflating the religious bases and glamorous appeal of the extremists’ ideology.”
The report urged a shift away from the “war on terror,” even though the officials also ran into a familiar hurdle. In what has become a parlor game of sorts, it failed to come up with a convincing replacement phrase:
The experts we consulted suggested defining the challenge of our times as “A Global Struggle for Security and Progress.” It is unlikely that this phrase will replace existing monikers such as “the war on terror” or “the long war,” which are more widely used both within and outside the government.
Both memos advised the U.S. government to separate religion from talk of war, leading right-leaning commentators to deride the effort as an ill-advised exercise in political correctness. But the official who supervised the Homeland Security memo disagreed in comments earlier this month to The Washington Times:
Daniel Sutherland, who runs the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, insisted that the avoidance of the term Islam in conjunction with terrorism “is in no way an exercise in political correctness. … We are not watering down what we say.”
“There are some terms which al Qaeda wants us to use because they are helpful to them,” he said.
The article noted that Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, would not be shifting his preferred label for the enemy — “Islamic terrorism” — despite the advice from the two agencies.
American backers of the phrase “war on terror,” which first appeared in The New York Times in 1881, also include Mr. Allen’s boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, other military brass, and, of course, the White House.
However, a spokesman’s support for the phrase included a reassuring message for Muslims and echoes of the same issues that troubled the contributors to the Homeland Security memo.
“While we want to be mindful to the way our messages are heard by Muslim audiences, we also think war on terror accurately describes the fight we are in,” Gordon Johndroe of the National Security Council told the F.T.
As this debate grows more complicated by the day, Vice President Cheney recently reminded another set of graduates that there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel — for the war and the phrase. “The war on terror is a lengthy enterprise,” he told Coast Guard cadets, “but it does not have to go on forever.”
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* al qaeda, foreign affairs, politics, terrorism
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