|
From the inadequate to the pathetic
Though the president made motions of denying it, his administration seems to be moving away from the phrase “war on terror,” a step conservatives have urged for the last four years. Unfortunately, the administration is giving up the vague ”war on terror”—which describes a method, not a concrete enemy such as militant Islam—for an even vaguer description: a “struggle” against global “extremism.” Conservatives, after complaining about the “war on terror” nomenclature for so long, are now ironically in the position of arguing that it should be kept, since it’s better than the mealy-mouthed alternative the administration is adopting!
This is paradigmatic of an administration and a president that keep moving left, a president who announces he will never negotiate with the Palestinians until they rid themselves of the terror infrastructure and ideology, and then proceeds to push Palestinian statehood more aggressively than ever; a president who says he opposes race-conscious preferences, then turns around and endorses them; a president who says he opposes the patently unconstitutional McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, then signs it; a president who pledges to pick judges in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, then picks Roberts; a president who says he opposes same-sex marriage, then allows his vice president publicly to support same-sex marriage while the president himself lets on that he supports homosexual civil unions; and on and on and on. Each leftward Bush move forces his conservative supporters to adjust accordingly, so that was once seen as liberal comes to be seen as conservative. And now, as a result of yet another Bush move to the left, the “war on terror,” that wholly inadequate phrase from a conservative point of view, has become the preferred “conservative” term. Email entry |