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.
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