Theodoric of DC

Regular readers know I've criticized our political and military leadership for playing cynical word games, particularly in regard to the insurgents-as-terrorists deceit. But not all word games are created equal.

The administration has taken a lot of heat for floating GSAVE---the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. That's too bad, because that acronym represents an attempt to refine and focus our collective understanding of what we're really fighting. About a month ago, I wrote about this and quoted Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, who retired last week as commander of all Marine forces in the Pacific theater:

This war has a popular label and a political label, but it's not accurate. Terrorism is a means of power projection, it's a weapon, it's a tool of war. Think of it as our enemy's stealth bomber. This is no more a war on terrorism than World War II was a war on submarines. It's not just semantics. Words have meaning. And these words are leading us down to the wrong concept.

The rest of Lt. Gen. Gregson's comments appear here. It's a must-read.

What's interesting is that Gregson's sanity appears to have had some traction at the senior levels of the Pentagon. Yes, "global struggle against violent extremism" is slightly convoluted and has a distinctly bureaucratic whiff about it. But guess what? It's a helluva better description of what we're actually fighting than "global war on terror." And once you define the problem correctly, the solution suddenly becomes a bit more clear. When you postulate that the threat we face is violent extremism, presumably you can begin to address its root causes. Then you can ask what it is about allies of ours like Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that creates violent extremism. And maybe that leads to some other uncomfortable questions---such as if violent extremism is the problem, why have we lost almost two thousand troops in an invasion and occupation of what was the most secular Muslim nation in the Middle East that produced exactly none of the attackers for 9/11 or any subsequent al-Qaeda operation outside of Iraq?

Maybe President Bush deep-sixed GSAVE because he instinctively realized this. Or maybe someone realized it for him. And the "struggle president" doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the "war president", does it? But the reluctance to move toward an accurate, enlightened definition of the battle we're fighting is true to his form. Undoubtedly, he defines the backward, reflexive path in his own mind as "staying the course." It's arguable that the worst thing to happen to Bush's presidency was Ronald Reagan; he seems to take the reasons for Reagan's success---unwavering principle, keeping it simple, staying on message---and apply them to his own presidency in ways that create limiting, shallow, or flat-out bad policy. Where Reagan was principled, Bush is rigid. If Bush is "conservative" he embodies the least flattering connotations of that term. In him, conservatism manifests itself as intransigence, obstinacy and ultimately ineffectiveness.

That's why instead of GWOT or GSAVE, a more appropriate acronym might be BAMM: the Battle Against Meaningless Mantras. Of course it's one thing to be bromidic and stubborn about issues of domestic policy; it's quite another when the lives of troops and civilians are at stake during a war.

It all reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit in which Steve Martin plays "Theodoric Of York"---a doctor in the Middle Ages who blood-lets, worms and leeches his patients, and in the process makes them far sicker than they would otherwise have been without any treatment. When faced with the opportunity to choose a more honest and enlightened path, Theodoric sticks with the reactionary, regressive methods that work for him but put his patients into their graves:

Joan: Dead! Dead! I can't believe it! My little daughter dead!

Theodoric of York: Now, Mrs. Miller, you're distraught, tired...you may be suffering from nervous exhaustion. I think you'd feel better if I let some of your blood.

Joan: You charlatan! You killed my daughter, just like you killed most of my other children! Why don't you admit it! You don't know what you're doing!

Theodoric of York: [ steps toward the camera ] Wait a minute. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps I've been wrong to blindly follow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a "scientific method". Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance! [ thinks for a minute ] Naaaaaahhh!