U.S. officials have decided to “retool” the slogan used to sell their war machine to the American people. Recent poll numbers show that support for GWB’s illegal war is on the wane so what’s a government to do? Repackage it!
So in the blink of an eye the “war on terror” becomes “a global struggle against violent extremism.”
“We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative,” offers Steven J. Hadley, the national security adviser.
“We must continue to be more expansive than what the public is understandably focused on now: the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Donald Rumsfeld.
In other words, they need to change their marketing strategy.
And, although Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gets it right in saying that the fight against “violent extremism ” should be “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military,” with almost 1800 Americans dead it’s a little too late for this kind of reasonable thinking. Anyway, the Bush administration can afford to listen to the voice of reason when it offers ideas that might help their poll numbers. Their self-service knows no bounds.
