Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [190]
Ever faithful God, in death we are reminded of the precious birthrights of life and liberty You endowed in Your American people. You have shown once again that these gifts must never be taken for granted…We seek Your special blessing today for those who stand as sword and shield, protecting the many from the tyranny of the few. Our enduring prayer is that You shall always guide our labors and that our battles shall always be just.5
Looking back on the weeks following 9/11, some accounts suggest an administration that seemed to have a preordained response to the attacks. From my vantage point, however, quite the opposite was the case. It was a time of discovery—of seeking elusive, imperfect solutions for new problems that would not be solved quickly. There was no guidebook or road map for us to follow.
We had discussions at our roundtable meetings in the Pentagon and in the Situation Room at the White House about the best way to characterize the threats our country faced and the nature of the conflict ahead. Early on, President Bush labeled the effort the “war on terror.” In one sense, calling the new conflict a war was helpful. It signaled that he believed treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter and terrorists as common criminals would not be adequate. Bush rightly rejected the longstanding practice of treating jihadist terrorist attacks as simple matters of domestic crime. The term also helped drive home the point that our primary goal was not to punish or retaliate, but rather to prevent additional attacks against America and our interests.
However, I became increasingly uncomfortable with labeling the campaign against Islamist extremists a “war on terrorism” or a “war on terror.” To me, the word “war” focused people’s attention on military action, overemphasizing, in my view, the role of the armed forces. Intelligence, law enforcement, public diplomacy, the private sector, finance, and other instruments of national power were all critically important—not just the military. Fighting the extremists ideologically, I believed, would be a crucial element of our country’s campaign against them. The word “war” left the impression that there would be combat waged with bullets and artillery and then a clean end to the conflict with a surrender—a winner and a loser, and closure—such as the signing ceremony on the battleship USS Missouri to end World War II. It also led many to believe that the conflict could be won by bullets alone. I knew that would not be the case.
I was also concerned about the other word in the phrases: terrorism, or terror. Terror was not the enemy, but rather a feeling. Terrorism was also not the enemy but a tactic our enemies were using successfully against us. Saying we were in a war on terrorism was like saying we were in a war against bombers or we were waging a war on tanks, as opposed to a war against the people using those weapons.
Striving for appropriate nomenclature is part of sound strategic thinking.6 If we did not clearly define who exactly we were at war against, it was harder to define the parameters of victory. As I developed these thoughts over the weeks and months following 9/11, I periodically raised them in the Department, with the President, and with the members of the National Security Council. I urged that we find ways to avoid the phrase war on terror and consider other alternatives.7
The phenomenon we were up against was not easily delineated in a few words. Sometime later, I tried out the phrase “struggle against violent extremists” in place of war on terror. A struggle suggested that military action alone would not be sufficient. Violent extremists seemed to be more accurate than terror or terrorism, but it was not quite right either, in that it stopped short of noting the central fact that our enemies were Islamists. My attempts to calibrate our administration