Democrats put end to global war on terror
By Toby Harnden in Washington| Democrats have banned the phrase "global war on terror" from the draft Pentagon budget, arguing that it is a propagandist term designed to boost President George W Bush's contention that the Iraq conflict was a war of necessity. The term, coined by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11 attacks, soon entered the American political lexicon. In Pentagon documents, it has its own acronym - GWOT. But Democrats on the House of Representatives' armed services committee, in an unconscious echo of Basil Fawlty's refrain of "Don't Mention the War!" in a Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans", has said that GWOT should be avoided. Republicans seized on the decision as evidence that the Democrats were weak on defence. "The attempt by Democrats to erase the words 'global' and 'terror' from our current war is an absurd effort to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale," said Congressman John Boehner, the Republican minority leader. "How do Democrats expect America to fight and win a war they deny is even taking place?... It's no wonder Democrats don't like the phrase 'global war on terror': they have completely failed to take the threat of global terrorism seriously." But Congressman Ike Skelton, the Democratic leader of the House armed services committee and whose staff made the ruling that terms such as "the war in Afghanistan" and "ongoing military operations" should be used, was unrepentant. "GOP [Republican] objections to our efforts to clarify legislative language represent the typical Republican leadership attempt to tie together the misadventure in Iraq and the overall war against terrorists," he said. Some conservatives have questioned the use of the term, arguing that it does not communicate the full extent of the threat. |
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