“We are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we are at war with something that is tangible: Al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered” - White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

The fun part about Leftists is that they tend to be pretty straightforward (not always though) about their incompetence and cowardice. This was a response to Dick Cheney’s comments about Obama pretending that we are not at war with terrorism and it goes to show how the Left twists statements in order to score political points. The statement, to begin with, is intellectually dishonest because it redefines “war on terror” and makes it into an absurdism. To say that the war on terror is strictly a war against the tactic of terrorism is akin to saying that the war on poverty is a war against poor people, or the war on drugs is a war against all drugs (recreational or health-related)… apparently, if the White House is releasing such incompetence on their blog, then Cheney seems to be right about the administration being soft on terror because they do not even seem to understand the context of “the war on terror.”

My second observation is that, in explicitly writing that “we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"),” the administration is making a quiet concession to our enemies: terrorism is an “acceptable” tactic. Just think about it, would Harry Truman have been criticized for saying that, after WWII, America was at war with genocide? What would have happened if the opposing party said “we are not at war with other countries’ domestic policies ("genocide")?” America absolutely should be at war with the use of terrorism abroad. When rockets are launched into civilian areas simply for the sake of killing civilians, we must respond. When suicide bombers board airplanes for the sole purpose of sending the world a message, we must respond. When planes are crashed into buildings killing thousands of innocent civilians while they worked, we did respond. There is a huge difference between guerrilla war and terrorism. So when the administration says that they are not at war against the tactic of terrorism, it sends the message to our enemies that maybe some terrorism, especially not directed at America, is acceptable. America is at war with terror… today it may be Al Qaeda, but we cannot ignore other organizations that use terror as a tool to destabilize regions and accomplish political goals. The world can never have peace as long as these organizations exist. To throw up our hands in defeat saying that we do not go to war against “tactics” is to enable this very tactic… and if this is what Obama has in mind with respect to our struggle against terror then, to quote Rush, I hope he fails.

-AG