The NY Times has an article on how Bush & Co have taken the ever not-so-bright “War against terror” slogan and refurbished it to “push” the idea that the “long-term struggle is as much an ideologocical battle as a military mission.” So said senior administration and miliary officials on Monday, referring to the very recent unveiling of the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism”.
With its focus on the military campaign, the “War against Terror” had been outlived.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday 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.
Source: NY Times
I sit and stare at my computer monitor as I read and parse and think life’s a funny thing because the “War against Terror” was such a bad, outrageous idea, and now that the “War against Terror” is over I should feel better about things. Right? A “Global Struggle Against Extremism” that looks to diplomatic, economic and political solutions, over military, should sound like a good thing. Right?
But I’m also thinking that at least in the mind of the public “terrorist” would have been difficult to apply to domestic dissent, whereas “extremist” has already been applied to organizations such as Greenpeace. And I think that solutions economic and political could mean anything. When I think of the US govt as conservative extremist and violent than this isn’t reassuring at all. I take it as a shift to the domestic in rhetoric. Which it is.
The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration’s strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Mr. Bush’s recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas.
“It is more than just a military war on terror,” Steven J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. “It’s broader than that. It’s a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative.”
Positive alternatives should sound good. Positive alternatives are meant to sound good. But the corporate, capitalist, enslaving ideals of the US govt, I don’t think of as positive alternatives. And Bush’s idea of freedom is very different from mine. Bush and I have a big clash of ideas going.
“Positive alternative” is, I think, a very strong Pavlovian buzz phrase for many people. “Ah, positive alternatives.” Comes with lots of super powerful cleaning fluids.
The heady scent of oxytocin.
I read of this after reading off and on during the day the excuses of many for the shooting of Jean-Charles, who turns out to have been shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, excuses that pretty much echo excuses made for shooting Iraqi families at checkpoints in their cars. The excuse is it’s a war zone and you can’t fault the police for protecting the public even if it means the death of a few innocent people.
I thought of that all day. When one accepts as matter-of-course, erroneous assumptions leading to the the deaths of innocent people, when one accepts this as a viable way of living, then one is at the point of mob rule. Because that’s what one gets when assumptions are all that are needed to condone extreme actions. When all that is needed are erroneous assumptions to merit and excuse the taking of life then the fabric of that society is damaged in the extreme. “But it was him or me!” some essentially say. Say that Jean-Charles made the mistake of the wrong coat and running and thus he deserved, in war time, what he got. Some say what are the alternatives as if there was no alternative.
Jean-Charles lived in a block of flats that was being watched, he did not emerge from an apartment under surveillance as originally stated, instead he emerged apparently from his apartment that happened to be in a block of flats being watched, he wore a coat of some sort, and if the authorities were suspicious of him for some reason they chose to tail him for two miles to the tube, chose to not stop and question him, chose to not stop him before he boarded the bus he took for two miles to the tube. I don’t get that. And I don’t get why, after having tackled him, they shot a downed man in the head 7 times (not 5 but 7, as revealed yesterday). I don’t get it. Some say they had to make sure he was dead and didn’t trigger the explosives. Except Jean-Charles was down and had no explosives and I even wonder where his hands were. He had started to trip and then was tackled. When you trip your hands tend to instinctively go out to catch you as you fall but they go out to the side, or at least they don’t likely both go under you, and every time I’ve seen someone pushed their hands tend to fly out, away from their bodies. So I keep wondering where Jean-Charles’ hands were as he lay there on the floor and had seven bullets unloaded into his head.
It all bothers me. The tailing for two miles. He was Asian. He was a suspect. Then he was not a suspect and was Brazilian. Bothers me that innocent individuals may be assumed guilty which means dead with a “shoot to kill” policy.
I could hash and rehash it forever. As I did earlier today when working on the CSS floating blocks of the website. unable to find a fix for the footer leaping up under “content” on the single post pages, knowing it had something to do with link properties and finally realized it’s an IE 6 hover bug and removed everything but color. And doing that for some reason affected the gallery page in IE 6, completely busting it. So finally I gave it up for the time being, in the meanwhile angsting over a million and one things, and thinking thinking thinking about the mystery of Jean-Charles, for it does seem a mystery to me, why he was tailed, why at the last moment it turned into a high drama chase, why he was shot seven times. I felt only listless and dry with the never-ending crap of it all, like something is ever in eclipse with a monster threatening to eat the world and we bang our sticks on our drums of tin and wood trying to chase it away but the monster won’t budge.
Rumsfeld used the phrase “global struggle against violent extremism” in a speech before the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, on May 25. He said:
We’re here today about 200 miles from the a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where those brave souls rose up against their captors and, in so doing, gave their own lives rather than allow the terrorists to kill any more of their fellow Americans.
In many ways, those passengers were foot soldiers in a war that had been declared on us, on our country, and on our way of life years before.
In discussing the way ahead in the global struggle against violent extremism, it is useful to consider some of the unique challenges of this era.
This is the first war in history being conducted in the 21st Century — an era of:
* Global satellite television networks;
* 24-hour news outlets with live coverage of terrorist attacks, disasters, and combat operations;
* A global Internet with universal access and no inhibitions;
* E-mail, cell phones, and digital cameras, wielded by everyone and anyone; and
* A seemingly casual regard for classified information, resulting in a near-continuous hemorrhage of classified documents to the detriment of our country.We see almost daily that, “a lie can make its way halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on,†as Mark Twain is reported to have said.
Operating in this challenging and dramatically new environment is an Executive Branch organized largely during the Industrial Age and arranged along the lines of Congressional Committees and Subcommittee structures. In short, the Federal Government is poorly equipped to cope with multiple issues arriving from every quarter, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We continue to be held to peacetime constraints and regulations imposed during the Cold War, in a different age, and in anticipation of notably different adversaries — adversaries that had governments, armies, and territories to defend, unlike our adversaries today.
…
For extremists, ideological support comes in many forms — from madrassas, from radical mosques, and other sources. Anti-American messages and images of hate quickly find their way across the world via the Internet and other advanced technologies.
Yet for decades, the international community’s response to this ideological battle has been inadequate. In particular, the standard U.S. government public affairs operation is still rooted in the era of daily and weekly news cycles, rather than the 24-hour global maelstrom of instant coverage on cable news, talk radio, and the Internet.
Communications operations may well require substantial innovation, greater agility and the speed that accompanies a transformed military. We will need to develop considerably more sophisticated ways of using the many new communication channels available to reach diverse audiences critical to success in this new world — and to do so near instantaneously.
This will require developing better access to the non-mainstream media around the world — as their influence continues to grow and as the influence and reach of more traditional channels continue to decline.
Despite the damage that can be done in an era of mass — and sometimes reckless — communications, free people eventually get it right. The American people seem to have an inner gyroscope that can sort through the clutter of information, misinformation and opinion and eventually reach balanced conclusions.
Policymakers will also need to consider new approaches for the government as a whole. The old, rigid divisions between war, peace, and diplomacy, conflict and reconstruction — and the roles of the various government departments that go with them — may no longer serve us as well, as we should require.
…In this complex multi-dimensional struggle, the President needs the flexibility to choose which instrument of national power, from within which agency, may be best suited for a given situation, challenge, region or country.
This has implications for the kind of people we recruit and the skill sets they will need — physical, cultural and intellectual.
The tasks ahead for them will continue to be demanding and will continue to evolve — encompassing such things as the need to shift seamlessly between warfighting and diplomacy, serving as educators and humanitarians, working not only with other branches of the military, but other agencies of government, private organizations and Coalition partners…
When the government is vague and talking broad sweeping changes (like there haven’t bee already re: the Patriot Act) then one wonders what’s up.
Earlier H.o.p. was playing with play-doh, mixing colors just enough so that only portions were blended and he’d hold up a sheet of play-doh before me and would ask what picture I saw in it. Then he goes back to drawing and brings me picture after picture. Winnie the Pooh assailed by monsters. Winnie the Pooh turns on the light and realizes the monsters were an open dresser drawer and a closet door.
“It was so dark, Winnie the Pooh was seeing things in his brain. When he turned on the light he wasn’t creeped up any more.”
When Rumsfeld talks about Americans sorting through information and using their inner gyroscopes to eventually get it right, I think of Rumsfeld unscrewing the lightbulbs and opening and closing dresser drawers and closet doors in the dark. Think of Famine Woman luring to the center of the dark forest with sugar cookies and candies.
Anyway, good-bye War Against Terror.
Welcome to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.
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