WI: Dubya didn't declare a "war on terror"

Wars on abstracts usually solve short term problems but create long term problems. This is because declaring the war solidifies support for those that are opposing the abstract (terror, poverty, drugs, etc.) but in the long run it is nigh impossible to ‘win’ a war on an abstract and if you don’t win a war... ...well the other option isn’t ever politically convenient.

So if President Bush hadn’t declared a war on terror it would in the short run have maybe not galvanised international support. At the time it was hard to determine whether this galvanisation was necessary, e.g. compare the use of the ‘with us or, against us’ trope that President Bush also employed for the same reasons. Probably in reality nothing changes short term.

Long term it means there is one less rhetorical issue as a millstone around Bush and Obama (unless you think this non-use of the phras will butterfly Obama’s presidency). The ‘war on terror’ is a nuisance but at most it’s just colouration on US foreign policy.
 
Was this when he advised his pubic wigs of a war on tourists? 'Fellow Merkins.....war on tourism' or did we mishear?
 
Some sort of "war" terminology was almost inevitable after 9/11, and in fact Bush could have done something much more provocative--he could have declared a "war on Radical Islam" that some conservatives urged him to do...
 
Some sort of "war" terminology was almost inevitable after 9/11, and in fact Bush could have done something much more provocative--he could have declared a "war on Radical Islam" that some conservatives urged him to do...

Bush had to declare war on something at that point. Terror, radical Islam, some country...the only way Bush doesn’t declare a war is if there’s no 9/11. The direction Bush takes that in could go a number of ways, but a war is inevitable.
 
Some sort of "war" terminology was almost inevitable after 9/11, and in fact Bush could have done something much more provocative--he could have declared a "war on Radical Islam" that some conservatives urged him to do...
Bush had to declare war on something at that point. Terror, radical Islam, some country...the only way Bush doesn’t declare a war is if there’s no 9/11. The direction Bush takes that in could go a number of ways, but a war is inevitable.
Couldn't Bush have said, "The United States declares war on Al-Qaeda"?
 
I suppose, but the Taliban wouldn’t cooperate and harbored al-Qaeda, so eventually the Taliban would get caught up in it.
I don't really see a way around that... the US was going to go after AQ, and the Taliban was determined to hide them, so a clash seems inevitable. Unless you can somehow get the Taliban to decide to give them up (unlikely, since OBL was helping to fund them)... However, if Bush had declared a 'war on AQ', that might shorten the war there; once we got bloody revenge on all the top members of AQ, the US might decide that staying in Afghanistan isn't a good idea and get out of the place...
 
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