Grapevine, Texas – President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, “Make no mistake about it, we are at war.”
In a speech, Bush used the phrase “war on terror” no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the “global struggle against violent extremism,” the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials in recent weeks after internal deliberations about how best to communicate how the United States views the challenge it is facing.
In recent public appearances, Rumsfeld and senior military officers have avoided formulations using the word “war,” and some of Bush’s top advisers have suggested that the administration wanted to jettison what had been its semi-official wording of choice, “the global war on terror.”
But administration officials became concerned when some news reports over the past few weeks linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy. At the same time, Bush by some accounts told aides he was not happy with the new phrasing.
It is not clear whether the new language embraced by other administration officials was adopted without Bush’s approval or if he reversed himself after the change was made. Either way, he planted himself Wednesday firmly on the blunter side and appeared intent on emphasizing that there had been no change in American policy.
“We’re at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001,” Bush said in his address here to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators. “We’re at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill.”
“Make no mistake about it, this is a war against people who profess an ideology, and they use terror as a means to achieve their objectives,” he said.
On Wednesday, in its efforts to hammer home the point that the “war” phraseology was still administration policy, the White House e-mailed to reporters after Bush’s speech some excerpts of an address delivered Tuesday by Rumsfeld. In that address, Rumsfeld backed away from the new language he had been using in recent weeks.
“Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror?” Rumsfeld said. “Let there be no mistake about it. It’s a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept. 11. The only way to defend against terrorism is to go on the attack.”
Bush arrived in Texas on Tuesday and is spending the rest of August at his vacation home in Crawford. Bush also used his appearance to build support for the issues that will be at the top of his agenda when he returns to Washington in September.
He said he would continue to push for an overhaul of Social Security and that he would press ahead with his call for a new approach to Immigration despite the deep divisions it has exposed within his own party.