The Obama Administration Has Stopped Fighting the War on Terror

To my surprise today, I came across an old Washington Times article, dated March 25, 2009, stating that the Obama administration has ended the War on Terror. The article says:

"In a memo e-mailed this week to Pentagon staff members, the Defense Department's office of security review noted that 'this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "

I couldn't believe it. The War on Terror was over, it wasn't a war on terror any longer, it was Overseas Contingency Operation.

The term "War On Terror" was adopted by George W. Bush a few days after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

"Our war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated", Bush said, addressing the Congress nine days after the attacks.

What exactly is an Overseas Contingency Operation?

Well it still looks like a war of terror, meaning we are still fighting the same things (Al Qaeda, extremist militants etc...) but we are no longer fighting a tactic, "because 'terrorism' is but a tactic - a means to an end, which in al Qaeda's case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate." Head of the White House Homeland Security Office, John Brennan said to The Center for Strategic and International Studies on August 6, 2009. There he informed the think tank that there was a new way to see the "war on terror".

What has changed?

Rhetoric mostly but it is also a shift in attitudes. Gone are terminologies like "jihadists" and "global war".

"Jihadist" is, "a legitimate term, 'jihad,' meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal", Brennan said. And to say we are fighting Jihadists "risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve." And what is, "Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself."

"Global war" is no longer allowed because, "portraying this as a 'global' war risks reinforcing the very image that al Qaeda seeks to project of itself - that it is a highly organized, global entity capable of replacing sovereign nations with a global caliphate."

So with that said, congratulations, we are finished with the war on terror and are now one step closer to leaving the region and getting back to fixing problems at home right?

Wrong, "[Obama] has encouraged us to be even more aggressive, even more proactive, and even more innovative" said Brennan to quell fears.

The administration is still keeping the term, "War on Al Qaeda".

Obama does not want to call it a quits, he hasn't thrown in the towel. If the US were to leave now there would not be any kind of stability and security in Iraq nor Afghanistan, and the US would be to blame.

Neither has Obama completely changed the way things are handled. Though water boarding has most likely stop, attempts at closing Guantanamo are underway, secret CIA prisons have been ordered closed and some troops from Iraq have been pulled out, Obama has still kept some of Bush's "war on terror" policies. The War in Afghanistan is in full swing and there are still drone attacks in Pakistan.

So it is mostly rhetoric that has changed, but that rhetoric came from a change in attitudes and vision. Brenan called the old attitude and rhetoric as "inflammatory", "hyperbole" and consisting of "intellectual narrowness".