Memo to Miliband: Obama thinks it is a war

Simon

There's a pre-election interview with Bill O'Reilly (Fox News) where Obama agreed that America was in a War On Terror. Whether that is what he truly believes is another matter however.

TrevorsDen

Can you be at war against a motive?

You can of course be at war against 'terrorists'.

One of the tactics in this war is to discredit the terrorists' motives.

By closing Guantanamo, Obama of course proposes to remove one of the fears a terrorist might have - the fear of being captured.

By closing Guantanamo Obama is of course removing one of his tactics and encouraging the enemy to persist.

They will.

We had an announcement today from the head of the army - it will of course never be reported by the BBC. In effect it is reducing the effective strength of the army by 40%. Its necessary of course, but the correct action by the government would be to increase the army by 30,000. It won't. Hardly an encouraging sign of our will to win this war on whatever euphamism seems acceptable to Spectator hacks.

It is in the situation now thanks to its pandering to Scottish bankers that it can do precious little about anything.

Dave Weeden

Er, no. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Fatwas "Bin Laden issued a fatwa,[65] which amounted to a public declaration of war against the United States and any of its allies..." It's not unreasonable to interpret Obama's statement as a recognition of a state of war with al Qaeda, a war which was declared over 12 years ago, and has not yet concluded.

The US is certainly still at war with the Taliban (despite the whole 'Mission Accomplished' fiasco), which also fits "far-reaching network of violence and hatred" and has not conceded the fight despite being driven out of government.

American service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly not peace-keeping and they run a considerable risk of returning the US wounded or dead, which also seems a pretty good definition of being at war. None of this, however, strikes me as a refutation of Miliband.

Obama: Now, I don't think that there is the same -- they are not part of the same network. You know, you got Shi'a and you got Sunni. We gotta have the ability to distinguish between these groups because, for example, the war in Iraq is a good example where I believe the administration lumped together Saddam Hussein, a terrible guy, with al Qaeda which had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein.

From his O'Reilly interview.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/09/foxs_bill_oreilly_obama_interv.html

Miliband: The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists, or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common.

Not so different.

S.M. Stirling

I'm rather pleased with Obama so far, though I voted for McCain (and supported Hillary in the primaries).

That's because it seems he lied where I thought/feared he was telling the truth, and told the truth where I assumed/feared he was lying.

We're going to get continuity in foreign policy, with some minor changes in rhetoric and tactics -- that's the message of keeping Gates at the Pentagon.