The Rhetoric of the War on Terror

As a rhetorical concept, “The War on Terror” has always been a mixed bag. It’s a semantically flawed expression of the U.S. war effort (a war cannot be waged against a tactic) that also manages to sum up the purpose of the U.S. war effort: to eliminate the practitioners of terrorism and their threat to our open society.

Its goals are laudable even if its execution has been flawed but as a term it has engendered partisan bickering and ideological conflict in a way that no martial phrase has in recent American memory. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have attempted to phase out “The War on Terror” as a descriptor of American foreign policy in an attempt to dump the ideological baggage that comes with it and start over.

But the American people will always think of the current world conflict as “The War on Terror,” a phrase that came about logically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The public consciousness on this issue will not be changed nor should it.

In spite of the phrase’s staying power, the Obama Administration has initiated a broad effort to re-categorize the American war effort as a sterile “transnational challenge” without any reference to Islamic terrorism. This shift was initiated in a speech more than a month ago delivered by the head of the White House homeland security office who said that the terms “war on terror,” “jihadists” and “global war” would no longer be used by the White House.

Such a shift in White House rhetoric represents a remarkable disconnect between the Obama Administration and reality. In reality, the United States is engaged in a global war against terrorists who self-describe as jihadists and are inspired by Islam.

Ignoring these facts is a political and ideological decision on the part of a president who fails to recognize that radical Islam is a defining threat to American society and who would rather make nice with the Muslim world and its autocratic rulers.

But it is impossible for the United States to coexist on the world stage with men like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or movements such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Such men and organizations represent a cult of death with its sole goal being the destruction of individual liberty and the subjugation of the world to theocratic dictatorship.

No compromise is possible with these purveyors of hate and violence nor should any American president attempt a compromise (rhetorical or material) with men whose sole goal is to plunge the world back into the Middle Ages where women had no rights, where individual liberty was subjugated to the state and where the state was a reflection of religious bigotry.