As American troops end their six-year presence on Iraqi city-streets, Washington announced a major change in its global war on terror, which polarised most of the world. Does this declaration mean that Washington, London and Paris will now perceive putative foes in a different light, or is this mere semantics?
According to Janet Napolitano, who succeeded the metaphor-happy Michael Chertoff as United States Secretary of Homeland Security, the term 'global war on terror' did not describe accurately the nature of the 'terrorist threat to the US'. "One of the reasons the nomenclature is not used is that 'war' carries with it a relationship to nation-states in conflict with each other," she told the Financial Times, adding: "and of course terrorism is not necessarily derived from the nation-state relationship." Reflecting the careful attention devoted to this matter at the highest levels of government, Napolitano concluded: "In some respects 'war' is too limiting."
In the past, experts have warned of the false association between wars and nation-states, which blurs intelligent public debates and encourages raw emotional reactions that cost lives and money. University of California professor of linguistics and cognitive science George Lakoff, for example, has declared that the use of such terminology as 'war on terror' should be banned because "terror is a general state, and it's internal to a person. Terror is not the person we're fighting, the 'terrorist'. The word terror activates your fear, and fear activates the strict father model, which is what conservatives want. The 'war on terror' is not about stopping you from being afraid, it's about making you afraid."
Lakoff correctly pointed out that 'terrorists' were few in number and could be defeated by nation-states using a variety of means. Another prominent neoconservative thinker, Francis Fukuyama - who abandoned the movement after its arguments fell flat - likewise asserted that the very "term 'war on terrorism' is a misnomer, resulting in distorted ideas of the main threat facing Americans today". "Terrorism is only a means to an end" and "in this respect, a 'war on terror' makes no more sense than a war on submarines," he asserted, displaying his typical humour.
To its credit, the Obama administration seems to be paying attention to what many thoughtful individuals have said for years, as a leaked news report last March revealed that the White House drafted an internal memo to ban use of the term. Senior officials, including US President Barack Obama, avoid the phrase, and Obama actually addressed several of its long-term political consequences in his June 4 Cairo remarks on a new beginning with the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Admittedly, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq radicalised disillusioned youths and led to the recruitment of many more extremists across the Muslim world than so-called 'experts' wished to believe, though policy organisations such as the independent Oxford Research Group in Britain and even the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in Washington recognised that the two wars of choice consolidated opposition to the West. In 2007, the NIC issued a useful estimate whose key judgment was that "the Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global Jihadist movement". It concluded with an even more affirmative declaration: "Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight."
Time will tell whether the latest redeployments in Iraq and Afghanistan will significantly diminish senseless killings. Still, beyond empowering Iraqi and Afghan security personnel to assume a greater share of the burden, it behooves the Obama Administration, along with its key allies in Europe and the Arab world, not to focus exclusively on military matters.
For in the end, the best tools available to effectively end such wars are those that confront and address poverty and destitution. Napolitano and her boss decided to diminish those counterproductive aspects of helter-skelter wars, which warmongers eagerly embarked upon after 9/11, though little will change beyond the cosmetic if injustice and poverty persevere.
We now live in a unique period of history where upheavals and uprisings are no longer the exclusive domains of the powerful. Inasmuch as it will probably be impossible to simply defeat terrorist groups by relying on military responses, or even by changing terminology, the burden is on those responsible for rulership to come to terms with serious distortions in wealth domination. As former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld was fond of repeating, the United States was fighting to "protect [its] way of life", which was crystal clear.
While discarding ill-advised terms such as 'war on terror' is a positive adjustment, a slight change in rhetoric will not accomplish much if necessary steps by security personnel do not accompany it. Napolitano is to be commended for moving away from military references, but one also hopes that she would now instruct Department of Homeland Security employees to dispense with humiliating procedures, which hurt reputations and hinder commerce. Instead, it may be better to entrust local police and intelligence services to go after cross-national criminals, and pledge to dissociate one from future adventures that neither ensure security nor protect a way of life.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is a commentator and author of several books on Gulf affairs.
