Mea Culpa.

The outgoing Speaker writes...

In short, Democrats do not believe in the Global War on Terror….What I mean is Democrats don't believe the war actually exists.

In the case of this particular Democrat, at least, Dennis Hastert's absolutely right (wow, never thought I'd find myself saying that!), because. well, it doesn't actually exist.

Even the most strident advocates of the GWT should understand that, after all, it is not a thing, but a metaphor, like the War On Poverty or the War On (some) Drugs, and, like it's predecessors, it's an unfortunate metaphor. Throwing the word 'war' at everything you don't like reduces the awful reality of the thing itself. It cheapens the sacrifices of those of us who've actually been to war.

So, no, I don't believe in the Global 'War' on Terror (for the record, I don't believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or moderate Republicans, either).

There's also the problem that the GWT isn't really global, and terror, well, it's pretty hard to pin down, isn't it. I mean, if some North Koreans got fed up and sabotaged their country's nuke plants, how hard would we go after them? If somebody had flown a plane into whichever palace Saddam was spending the night in, how fast would we have retaliated?

We need some reality based language for campaigns against social and political problems that implies appropriate urgency without invoking the specter of the horrific last resort of war.

There's another metaphor, after all, that's truly reality-based for those of us who've been there.

War is Hell.