We Need To Quit Using "War On Terror" to describe Iraq/Afghanistan...

Every time Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and the PNAC gang use the "War on Terror" designation, we need to ask which countries they are referring to, which groups of terrorists they are referring to, and why don't they use those names rather than an euphemism?

By definition there is no such thing as a "War on Terror" since wars are not waged on ideas. Wars are fought against real people and countries.

Because he started it.

now it is an occupation
before "Mission Accomplished" it was an illegal invasion
no war here and especially no "war on terrorism"

Plain and simple our country murdered thousands of innocent Iraq and Afghan people.

nice idea though.

.... by using "War on Terror" to frame the debate before any argument is heard.

We need to quit using the phrases period.

"war on terror"
"homeland security"
"we are fighting them over there so we dont have to fight them here"

Tou might enjoy his latest article:

Five Years After 9/11: Drop the War Metaphor

But the crime frame did not prevail in the Bush administration. Instead, a war metaphor was chosen: the "War on Terror." Literal --not metaphorical -- wars are conducted against armies of other nations. They end when the armies are defeated militarily and a peace treaty is signed. Terror is an emotional state. It is in us. It is not an army. And you can't defeat it militarily and you can't sign a peace treaty with it.

The war metaphor was chosen for political reasons. First and foremost, it was chosen for the domestic political reasons. The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation. From within the war metaphor, being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic, to be against defending the nation. The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive. Once the war metaphor took hold, any refusal to grant the president full authority to conduct the war would open progressives in Congress to the charge of being unpatriotic, unwilling to defend America, defeatist. And once the military went into battle, the war metaphor created a new reality that reinforced the metaphor.

Once adopted, the war metaphor allowed the president to assume war powers, which made him politically immune from serious criticism and gave him extraordinary domestic power to carry the agenda of the radical right: Power to shift money and resources away from social needs and to the military and related industries. Power to override environmental safeguards on the grounds of military need. Power to set up a domestic surveillance system to spy on our citizens and to intimidate political enemies. Power over political discussion, since war trumps all other topics. In short, power to reshape America to the vision of the radical right -- with no end date.

In addition, the war metaphor was used as justification for the invasion of Iraq, which Bush had planned for since his first week in office. Frank Luntz, the right-wing language expert, recommended referring to the Iraq war as part of the "War on Terror" -- even when it was known that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and indeed saw Osama bin Laden as an enemy. Fox News used "War on Terror" as a headline when showing film clips from Iraq. Remember "Weapons of Mass Destruction?" They were invented by the Bush administration to strike terror into the hearts of Americans and to justify the invasion. Remember that the Iraq War was advocated before 9/11 and promoted as early as 1997 by the members of the Project for the New American Century, who later came to dominate in the Bush administration. Why?

more-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/five-years-after-911-dr_b_29181.html

I prefer "illegal invasion of Iraq" and "bullshit Orwellian power grab" myself.

Heck, even Rumsfeld is not pleased with "war on terror". Remember that period, when he started calling it the "global struggle against violent extremism", and it just didn't take?

The truth is these Islamist movements are real, and they do plot terror (although it seems Europe is more in the front line than America at the moment). They want to kill innocent people in some twisted logic of their radical agenda.

I just looked at that Lakoff article quickly, so forgive me if I missed the phrase, but until somebody comes up with something better, "war on terror" will continue to describe this struggle.