Post by Vierotchka on May 23, 2013 16:47:08 GMT -5
... while vowing it will go on by other means.
President Barack Obama's sprawling national security speech this afternoon veered from the controversial drone program that has killed at least 3,000 alleged militants overseas since 2002 to the legality and ethics of his justice department snooping into reporter's emails.
But if the speech is remembered for anything years hence it will be as the moment when the president declared "The war on terrorism is dead! Long live the open-ended game of whack-a-mole against diffuse networks!"
Yes, that's right. Obama has rhetorically put to bed the frankly silly GWOT terminology – while obliquely calling for years of low-grade conflict. The president said that core Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan are on a "path to defeat" but said the use of the drone program, to kill people in far off lands we are not at war with, will have to continue for years.
"We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do – what we must do – is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold," Obama said. "Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."
Read the whole article at www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2013/0523/Obama-rhetorically-ends-the-war-on-terror
President Barack Obama's sprawling national security speech this afternoon veered from the controversial drone program that has killed at least 3,000 alleged militants overseas since 2002 to the legality and ethics of his justice department snooping into reporter's emails.
But if the speech is remembered for anything years hence it will be as the moment when the president declared "The war on terrorism is dead! Long live the open-ended game of whack-a-mole against diffuse networks!"
Yes, that's right. Obama has rhetorically put to bed the frankly silly GWOT terminology – while obliquely calling for years of low-grade conflict. The president said that core Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan are on a "path to defeat" but said the use of the drone program, to kill people in far off lands we are not at war with, will have to continue for years.
"We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do – what we must do – is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold," Obama said. "Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."
Read the whole article at www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2013/0523/Obama-rhetorically-ends-the-war-on-terror
