Bush Declares the War is Over

Today's Progress Report, from the American Progress Action Fund, reports:

After having waged an entire presidential reelection campaign based on the need to stand strong in the "war on terror," the Bush administration is now informing us that there isn't really a war on terror after all. The New York Times writes that Secretary Rumsfeld and military officials have spoken of a "global struggle against violent extremism" rather than the "global war on terror" because "if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." For his part, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said he had objected to term "war on terrorism" before, but in yet another case of the White House not listening to military leadership, they've continued to politicize the term over the past 3 years. After having fended off criticisms that it was overly-focused on a military victory in the "war on terror," the Bush administration appears to be slowly gravitating the correct view that "the solution is 'more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military.'"

Of course, we still don't know how this affects the status of enemy combatants being held for the duration of whatever we call it now, or for that matter the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress.