Obama drops Bush's 'war on terror

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Washington Examiner:

Obama drops Bush's 'war on terror'
By: JULIE MASON
Examiner White House Correspondent
November 11, 2010

The return of former President George W. Bush to the public spotlight this week helped underscore how different some things are in Washington under his successor, President Obama. Like the "war on terror."

Bush still talks about it. Obama rarely does.

The war on terror was a constant refrain of the Bush presidency after the Sept. 11, 2001. terrorist attacks, a rhetorical construct Obama has uttered publicly fewer than half a dozen times since becoming president two years ago.

The phrase surfaces occasionally in budget documents, and Obama has offered some variations with "the global fight against extremism" or the "enduring struggle against terrorism."

Though Obama upholds a number of Bush's anti-terrorism policies, including rendition flights of suspects to other countries and the use of military tribunals to try terrorism suspects. But for the most part, the war on terror is over as presidential locution, even as the global fight against extremism and the enduring struggle against terrorism rage on.

"Bush is a lot more blunt than Obama, just from a message construct standpoint," said Joseph Valenzano III, an expert on political rhetoric at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "But language also reflects the way we see reality."

Bush's embrace of expressions like "the war on terror" and "freedom is on the march" reflect the circumstances of his presidency and a stark communication difference from Obama, whose rejects slogans and catchphrases.