US no longer at war with 'terrorism', says top official

[Newsjock]

Source: Economic Times (India)

The US is no longer engaged in a "war on terrorism"; neither is it fighting "jihadists" nor locked in a "global war" as the Obama administration's top homeland security and counterterrorism official has called the terms coined by the Bush administration as unacceptable.

It is now solely a "war with Al Qaeda" and its violent extremist allies, John Brennan, who heads the White House homeland security office, said during a speech on Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

... According to Brennan, to say the US is fighting "jihadists" is wrong because it is using "a legitimate term, 'jihad', meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal", which "risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve."

"Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself," Brennan was quoted as saying.

He said the administration will not use the phrase 'war on terrorism' "because terrorism is but a tactic - a means to an end, which in Al Qaeda's case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate."


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