‘The Long War’, a phrase that is being tossed around these days to describe our posture in tackling the Terrorism Problem.

Rumsfeld Offers Strategies for Current War:

“The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the ‘long war,’ likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.”

It is also the phrase being used to describe our general posture towards China.

Ability to Wage ‘Long War’ Is Key To Pentagon Plan:

“China is singled out as having ‘the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States,’ and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.

The latest top-level reassessment of strategy, or Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is the first to fully take stock of the starkly expanded missions of the U.S. military — both in fighting wars abroad and defending the homeland — since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

…

Under the 2001 review, the Pentagon planned to be able to ‘swiftly defeat’ two adversaries in overlapping military campaigns, with the option of overthrowing a hostile government in one. In the new strategy, one of those two campaigns can be a large-scale, prolonged ‘irregular’ conflict, such as the counterinsurgency in Iraq.”

It is also the phrase that will be tied, in short time, to Hugo Chavez.

Rumsfeld Likens Chavez’s Rise to Hitler’s:

“Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likened Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Adolf Hitler, reflecting continuing tension in relations between the United States and the Latin American government.”

Let’s not leave Africa and SE Asia out. How about the caucasus?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | America’s Long War:

“The Pentagon does not pinpoint the countries it sees as future areas of operations but they will stretch beyond the Middle East to the Horn of Africa, north Africa, central and south-east Asia and the northern Caucasus.”

A really solid explanation of the ‘long war’, which, at the time was called WWIV can be found in Tom Englehardt’s piece: Are We In World War IV.

People For Change – ARE WE IN WORLDWAR 4?-tom englehardt:

“But are we really in a multi-generational GWOT? Is this really World War IV? Let’s start with that number IV. For the image to work, you do have to accept that the ‘Cold War’ — and the marriage of those two words always indicated that as a war it would remain half-frozen because the full-fledged hot version of itself could never be fought — was indeed World War III, which, as I’ve already indicated, it most distinctly wasn’t. And if you move beyond the phrase World War IV (which most people won’t) into the elaborate writings produced by its proponents, you find that what they really want to do is cherry-pick the ‘best’ of the two actual world wars — their sense of globalism and mission, the threat of mass death and the apocalyptic (the Holocaust in particular) against which to mobilize, the raw badness of World War II’s enemies – and combine it with the ‘best’ of the Cold War.”

More of Tom’s work can be found here: http://tomdispatch.com/

So what’s the point?

The point is that this administration, supported by the Republican Party, and dragging along many Democrats, is trying to set us on a path to Perpetual War.

The Long War is a really nice term in terms of messaging. It is antiseptic. It is calm. It is reasoned, and it is ambiguous as hell.

We need to head this off at the pass in terms of  framing. Let’s embrace the duration part of it, and give it our own meaning. Let’s call it what it is Perpetual War.

We need to start speaking forcefully against Perpetual War.

I don’t think that declaring war on the entire planet is a good idea.

Do you?