DHS Security chief decries �war on terror�

By Cernig

The Department of Homeland Security's top intelligence official has urged the administration to stop using the phrase 'War on Terror", saying that it is counter-productive:

Charles Allen, the senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, says the phrase is counter-productive because it creates �animus� in Islamic countries.

�[It] has nothing to do with political correctness,� Mr Allen said in an interview. �It is interpreted in the Muslim world as a war on Islam and we don�t need this.�

...While US officials have warned about an increasing potential for home-grown terrorism, Mr Allen welcomed the results of a 2007 study by the Pew Research Center, which found that the vast majority of US Muslims were concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism and had an unfavourable view of al-Qaeda.

Mr Allen says any comprehensive communications strategy demands a comprehensive outreach programme to Muslim communities both in the US and abroad, which he says is starting to happen.

He also recommends that the next president tell the American people that the country faces a �long, difficult struggle� and has �to engender the kind of strong counter-radicalisation and messaging abroad that will roll back this extremism�.

A recent memo from the homeland security department�s office for civil rights and civil liberties echoed some of these concerns. The memo said terminology employed by the US government should �avoid helping the terrorists by inflating the religious bases and glamorous appeal of their ideology� and �must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the west is at war with Islam�.

Mr Knocke, the Homeland Security spokesman, stressed that the memo was not formal policy, but a series of recommendation that have originated from �active and ongoing dialogue with the community to promote civic engagement and prevent radicalization�.

Frank Cilluffo, a terrorism expert at George Washington University and former special assistant to Mr Bush for homeland security, says the US government can take a series of steps to help counter al-Qaeda. He agrees that the US should abandon the concept of a �war on terror� � which �fuels the adversaries narrative� � and �decouple religion from ideology�.

It's a view that has gained wider acceptance from the likes of Peter Hoekstra, who has said the phrase is the �dumbest term�you could use�, and CJCS General Mullen.

While the military in general tends to echo the langauge of the president, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs who recently met with moderate Muslim leaders to hear their concerns, tries to ensure his language does not create the perception of a war against Islam, Captain John Kirby, his spokesman, said.

�The chairman is aware of the concerns voiced by many in the Muslim community about the phrase �war on terror�,� Captain Kirby said.

�He is committed � when speaking of it � to focusing his language and efforts on the violent extremists we are fighting. This is not a war on Islam. It�s a war against lethal enemies who are using a warped view of that faith to justify killing innocent civilians.�

Mullen will, hopefully, be outraged and dumbfounded by the latest "hearts and minds" failure in Iraq - US Marines handing out tokens urging the citizens of Fallujah to convert to Christianity. If there was ever a way to play into the extremists' narrative that US Christian soldiers are waging a crusade against Islam, this is it.

But really, the phrase "War on Terror" is just too useful domestically to Republicans to be dropped, as Zbigniew Brzezinski explained in a memorable March 2007 op-ed for the Washington Post:

Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

...The culture of fear has bred intolerance, suspicion of foreigners and the adoption of legal procedures that undermine fundamental notions of justice. Innocent until proven guilty has been diluted if not undone, with some -- even U.S. citizens -- incarcerated for lengthy periods of time without effective and prompt access to due process. There is no known, hard evidence that such excess has prevented significant acts of terrorism, and convictions for would-be terrorists of any kind have been few and far between. Someday Americans will be as ashamed of this record as they now have become of the earlier instances in U.S. history of panic by the many prompting intolerance against the few.

...The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"?

Where indeed?