Talk:War on terror

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Revision as of 13:11, 28 October 2008 by imported>Howard C. Berkowitz (→‎Again, CZ is about context and interpretation: new section)
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Lethal pens

"The President fired the first shot in the war on terrorism with the stroke of his pen "

Didn't James Bond or Maxwell Smart do that first? Howard C. Berkowitz 14:52, 26 June 2008 (CDT)

I loved the original Get Smart TV show. George Swan 15:28, 26 June 2008 (CDT)

Again, CZ is about context and interpretation

Footnotes are not the places for lengthy quotes. Indeed, it's often better to paraphrase and analyze than to quote. It would be, perhaps, something else if these were the prose of a Churchill or a Lincoln. What should be drawn from the quotes?

  • quote=Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Who are defined as terrorists? What U.S. law applies? What formal mechanisms exist for declaring groups and organizations suspect? This can be as broad as declaring state sponsors of terrorism or as specific as getting on a seemingly unchallengeable and secret list that prevents people of a common name from boarding airliners.

  • quote=The President fired the first shot in the war on terrorism with the stroke of his pen to seize terrorist financial assets and disrupt their fundraising pipelines. The world financial community is moving to starve the terrorists of their financial support. 196 countries support the financial war on terror; 142 countries have acted to freeze terrorist assets; in the U.S. alone, the assets of 153 known terrorists, terrorist organizations, and terrorist financial centers have been frozen; and major terrorist financial networks have been closed down.

I can think of quite a bit of financial activities that could be linked to and from this. Start with financial intelligence, and there's a huge amount of information available.

  • quote=To win the war on terror, we must be able to detain, question, and, when appropriate, prosecute terrorists captured here in America, and on the battlefields around the world.

Again, this belongs in context. What new legal interpretations are there? Are they consistent with customary international law? What has been supported and fought? Why not even relate these to your articles on specific cases?

Now, the next quote certainly could be used for anyone who wanted an example of confused writing. Perhaps this is a demonstration that he can't express it coherently, but there are better-written policy documents on the White House web site. Try "National Security Policy of the United States".

  • quote=See, Iraq is a part of the global war on terror. It's not "the" global war on terror, it's a theater in the global war on terror. And if we fail in Iraq, it's going to embolden al Qaeda types. It will weaken the resolve of moderate nations to stand up to the Islamic fascists. It will cause people to lose their nerve and not stay strong.

I removed the document count. It's not especially meaningful without a date, and it also assumes that all White House documents are on the Web, or, indeed, all Administration speeches are in writing: Over six thousand documents generated by [[the White House]] use this phrase.<ref>[http://www.google.ca/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=jcq&q=%22war+on+terror%22+site%3Awhitehouse.gov+2001&btnG=Search&meta= web search for speeches, press releases, and other white house documents that mention the phrase "war on terror"]</ref>

Please, George. Depth. There are lots of places to get indignant declarations and Bush quotes, starting with http://www.whitehouse.gov. Why should someone come to CZ for this? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:10, 28 October 2008 (UTC)