“They won’t take my blankie. They won’t, they won’t, they won’t,” sputtered Master George with pouty lips.
“Now, now, dear. Everything’s okay,” soothed his nanny, Ms. Hughes. “We’ll put ‘war’ back into your little talks right away. Then how ‘bout a nice long vacation at the ranch with the ponies and chainsaws?”
Thus ended the short-lived reality experiment by the Bush administration. Gone is the “global struggle against violent extremism”; back is the “war on terror.”
W. cold-shouldered the new phraseology for a couple excellent reasons. First, as reported, “administration officials became concerned when some news reports linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy” - “policy” meaning Iraq’s systematic ruination. We all know Bush doesn’t do change and he doesn't do shifts; he stays the course, especially when the course is colossally futile and as long as the expendable reside in the lowest tax bracket.
Second, Bush disliked the “change of tone from the wording he had consistently used since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
That’s the underlying reason - the “this has always worked wonders” reason - that caused so much puzzlement when the reality-based phrase was introduced. We suspected it couldn’t possibly indicate a change in strategic policy (see above, and below). But it was a profound change in political strategy - the thump, thump, thump of war, war, war that First Lieutenant Rove has beat to death in an increasingly arduous attempt to keep W.’s numbers up.
The policy’s failure, the fact that it actually abets the enemy, the counterproductivity of the sinking Iraq campaign, the needless loss of American lives, the destruction wreaked on innocents - none of that matters in BushWorld. What does matter is the politics of it: is it politically advantageous or not? And clearly, deleting the inspirational thump-thump of “war” at Propaganda Central was just about as disadvantageous as any revision could get.
Rove must have been absolutely beside himself when the novices began fiddling with his war - novices like Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers, who said 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.”
What a beginner. What a chump. He didn’t even have the right war. Rove doesn’t care about all that foreign policy stuff and military objections and certainly not a “solution.” They’re extraneous, utterly beside the point. He cares only about the rousing, repetitive chants of “WAR” - W’s Advantageous Ruse.
Properly tutored, Master George emphasized the errors of his lesser playmates’ ways in his latest - and last pre-recess - speech this week by sputtering “‘war on terror’ no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the ‘global struggle against violent extremism.’”
Nor, apparently, shall the mention of global complexities be permitted by those who recently failed to appreciate what war it is that Bush is waging. Said a chastised secretary of defense this week: “Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror? Let there be no mistake about it. It’s a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept. 11.” I doubt that Donald comprehended all the fuss anyway, since it couldn’t be quantified in glossy metrics.
Nevertheless one of Rumsfeld’s spokesmen, Lawrence Di Rita, did manage to squeeze in some nifty Pentagonese. In addressing the suggestion that Rumsfeld was linguistically backpedaling, Di Rita denied that the re-revised language was “push back.” (Where do they find these guys?)
So W. has his war again, right where we started. Meanwhile violent extremism travels about quite nicely, and globally.