Home » Archives » February 2006 » Washington Digs In for a 'Long War' as Rumsfeld Issues Global Call to Arms
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02/08/2006:
"Washington Digs In for a 'Long War' as Rumsfeld Issues Global Call to Arms"
The Bush administration's re-characterisation of its "global war on terror" as the "long war" will be seen by critics as an admission that the US has started something it cannot finish. But from the Pentagon's perspective, the change reflects a significant upgrading of the "generational" threat posed by worldwide Islamist militancy which it believes to have been seriously underestimated.The reassessment, contained in the Pentagon's quadrennial defence review presented to Congress yesterday, presages a new US drive to rally international allies for an ongoing conflict unlimited by time and space. That presents a problematic political, financial and military prospect for many European Nato members including Britain, as well as Middle Eastern governments.
According to the review, a "large-scale, potentially long duration, irregular warfare campaign including counter-insurgency and security, stability, transition and reconstruction operations" is necessary and unavoidable. Gone is the talk of swift victories that preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion. This will be a war of attrition, it says, fought on many fronts.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, suggested at the weekend that western democracies must acknowledge they are locked in a life or death struggle comparable to those against fascism and communism. "The enemy have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire."
commondreams.org
Guns Over Butter, Abroad and at Home
WASHINGTON - Despite his administration's growing concerns about preventing the collapse of states in strategic parts of the world, U.S. President George W. Bush has proposed cuts in development and disaster assistance while increasing the defence budget by almost seven percent.
We see that diplomacy and defence are well taken care of, but development is the weakest tool in our kit. Yet that's where our long-term security lies.
Mohammad Akhter, president, InterAction
Under his 2007 budget request submitted to Congress Monday, Pentagon spending next year would rise to some 440 billion dollars, not including another 120 billion dollars that the administration is expected to ask for as a supplemental appropriation to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, when fiscal 2006 ends.
By contrast, Bush's proposed 2007 foreign-aid request will remain roughly the same as last year's at some 24 billion dollars, the equivalent of what Washington spends in less than five months in Iraq.
Moreover, the president is calling for a nearly 20 percent cut in development aid -- from roughly 1.5 billion dollars to 1.26 billion dollars in development aid -- and similar cuts in disaster assistance and child-survival and health programmes.
"This administration has said there are three components to national security -- diplomacy, defence, and development," said Mohammad Akhter, president of InterAction, a coalition of some 160 U.S. non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in developing countries. "We see that diplomacy and defence are well taken care of, but development is the weakest tool in our kit. Yet that's where our long-term security lies.
Yes. We will 'aid' them into submission.
