A Brief History of the War Formerly Known As The Global War On Terror
2-20-12
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author most recently of Washington Rules: The American Path to Permanent War and the editor of the new book The Short American Century: A Postmortem, just out from Harvard University Press. Crossposted from TomDispatch.
With the United States now well into the second decade of what the Pentagon has styled an era of persistent conflict, the war formerly known as the global war on terrorism (unofficial acronym WFKATGWOT) appears increasingly fragmented and diffuse. Without achieving victory, yet unwilling to acknowledge failure, the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq. It is trying to leave Afghanistan, where events seem equally unlikely to yield a happy outcome.
Elsewherein Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia, for exampleU.S. forces are busily opening up new fronts. Published reports that the United States is establishing a constellation of secret drone bases in or near the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula suggest that the scope of operations will only widen further. In a front-page story, the New York Times described plans for thickening the global presence of U.S. special operations forces. Rushed Navy plans to convert an aging amphibious landing ship into an afloat forward staging basea mobile launch platform for either commando raids or minesweeping operations in the Persian Gulfonly reinforces the point. Yet as some fronts close down and others open up, the wars narrative has become increasingly difficult to discern. How much farther until we reach the WFKATGWOTs equivalent of Berlin? What exactly is the WFKATGWOTs equivalent of Berlin? In fact, is there a storyline here at all?
Viewed close-up, the war appears to have lost form and shape. Yet by taking a couple of steps back, important patterns begin to appear. What follows is a preliminary attempt to score the WFKATGWOT, dividing the conflict into a bout of three rounds. Although there may be several additional rounds still to come, heres what weve suffered through thus far.
More: http://hnn.us/articles/brief-history-war-formerly-known-global-war-terror
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saras
(6,670 posts)Aside from slasher movies, I didn't really think terror was that big a deal.
I would have started a war on sorrow or grief instead.
Owlet
(1,248 posts)Hell, you can't even find an anagram for it.
http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=WFKATGWOT&t=1000&a=n
leveymg
(36,418 posts)against the Shi'ia. This taking sides in an intra-Muslim religious civil war is totally insane, and I fear can only come to further grief for the United States.
9/11 was all about the Saudi power struggle, and the U.S. role in propping up one faction of the Saudi Royals against another. We're now moving into another phase of being used by the ruling Sunnis as mercenary army against the rival Shi'ia branch of Islam centered in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. If you liked 9/11 and the Iraq War, just wait until that religious war blows back.