The Pentagon can come up with any acronyms it likes, and they can pretend to care about global alliances and terror networks.  But actions talk and acronyms walk, in my opinion.
Bush is going to be the same old Bush, this administration will continue to be hated and loathed, and the real war on terror will be underfunded in favor of the Iraq debacle.
I find it funny that some underlings want to change the entire policy of the administration, yet didn't both to inform Farmer McChimpy of that fact. It's also funny that the Bushies pretend that they just came up with this idea, when in fact reality-based minds on the left were advocating these tactics four years ago.

In short, the pentagon is realizing what most sentient beings realized in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: that we cannot possibly be at "war" with something called "terrorism;" that "terrorism" covers a very wide range of behaviors, all of which are disgusting but many of which pose no security threat to the United States; that the problem the United States faces is a specific form of terrorism, namely jihadist islamic fundamentalism; and that solving the problem requires more than random, poorly thought out "cakewalk" invasions.

george bush and dick cheney are quite clearly incapable of thinking this through at any level, and so we will continue to stumble for the next 3.5 years.

Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of this group haven't changed. Also, wars are black/white, something simple minds can comprehend and address. Global Struggle Against Violent Extremists...well, by definition appears to be complex, multi-layered and demands a much more comprehensive approach if one wants to be successful. Hardly something we have seen from Bushco.

No, I really can understand why Bush wants to keep GWOT - he simply doesn't have the intellectual horsepower to deal with GSAVE.

My sense is that Rumsfield and the Pentagon were never happy with "war" and "terrorism," except insofar as it offered cover for a while for Rumsfield to try to do what he wanted to do.  But I don't think the realization you mention is as recent with Rumsfield and the military as you suggest.

I wonder if this is just a ploy by the Pentagon to redfine the problem so that the failure is someone else's?

War on Extremism but they didn't like the acrony m WOE. It sure is approprate.

Besides Bush would have to attack himself and his administration, extremists all.

Maven, I agree with most everything you said 100% -- except for this:
<span class="Apple-style-span">"we now really seem to have a situation where the Administration's right hand and left hand are operating at cross-purposes."</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">
</span&gt<span class="Apple-style-span">When talking about the Bush Administration, the metaphor really should be "the Administration's right hand and far-right hand." </span&gt

I don't think we can question whether there's really a new strategy. Whatever its label, it's quite real at DOD/State/NSC. As we've been tracking at Liberals Against Terrorism for months now, both policies and rhetoric from the Bush Admin leaders (especially Rumsfeld, Myers and Rice) have shifted noticeably since early this year. Lacking a catchy acronym, we've described the emerging long-term multi-dimensional global strategy as "marginalization" of extremism, akin to the Cold War "containment" strategy.

The shift in strategy appears to have been driven, as Ivo suggests, by the military, which has understood for some time that it alone can't "win" a "war" but it can "execute" its part of a long-term multi-dimensional "strategy." (Thanks for that formulation to Armchair Generalist.) Rumsfeld's "snowflakes" were the bureaucratic catalyst for pulling together thinking that was already well-advanced within the bowels of the military itself.

Beginning with Rice's confirmation hearings in January, it looks like State/NSC have also been pushing forward on elaborating the non-military parts of "marginalization" or GSAVE -- not only the "negative" dimensions of collaborating with other countries to limit the breeding grounds and capabilities of extremists who could turn into transnational terrorists, but as Stephen Hadley says, the "positive" promise of democracy and freedom. Karen Hughes may not be at her desk in Foggy Bottom, but if you look at her nomination acceptance speech and her confirmation hearings testimony, you'll see she's been hard at work refining the way the "positive" message is going to be delivered.

The change in message has been real and steady. Rumsfeld was already using the full version of the new formulation in May, although without turning it into an acronym. Karen Hughes' rhetoric and slogans are being constantly woven through speeches and remarks by Rice's entire team at State. In fact, their message discipline is so complete that sometimes I feel like I'm just listening to automatons.

The problem for the Bush Admin is that, while policy and rhetoric have been steadily evolving, the "branding" has remained fixed. The introduction of "GSAVE" reflects the need to update the "brand" and align it with the reality of evolving policy objectives and operational approaches. The big surprise hasn't been the appearance of GSAVE as a label for what's already in the works. The big surprise was Bush reverting to a hard-core version of the old GWOT brand during his prime time speech on Iraq at the end of June. But when it comes to Iraq, Bush knows his key audience, which insists on "winning the war," even though we're quite sensibly engaged in de-escalation and gradual withdrawal, consistent with a broader global strategy of minimizing threats from violent (primarily Islamist) extremism.

As I wrote in a post yesterday, Bush is now out on a limb.

To mobilize a considerable part of the American public, Bush and his team oversold an idea that was questionable at the outset but has by now certainly outlived its usefulness. The Administration now has to engage in a sleight-of-hand -- it must shift goalposts and policies to ones that are far more realistic, promising and sustainable internationally, while maintaining the unquestioning loyalty of a critical domestic constituency whose support is premised on that core idea.

I don't expect Bush's re-enforcement of the old and tired GWOT brand to have any substantive impact on the Bush Admin's strategic redirection. What we will see, instead, is an increasingly artificial domestic marketing program that becomes further disconnected from the reality of both policy objectives and outcomes. Bush's "credibility gap" is going to widen even further, much to the distress of the US military (and, I'd assume, Rumsfeld and Rice). But the principal audience for the GWOT brand isn't bothered by cognitive dissonance and a "credibility gap." And Bush needs that audience to survive the years of unpleasantness he's facing in Iraq as the US military tries to stage-manage a gradual withdrawal while avoiding a complete collapse of Iraq into anarchy, with all its dreadful implications for regional stability and international jihadism.

My bet: Expect that both policy and speeches to international audiences will continue to develop the (implicit) GSAVE approach. But also expect to be fed a regular diet for domestic consumption of (explicit) GWOT rhetoric from the White House.

I like that phrase even better than the wording I was originally going to use, which would refer to their right hand and their other right hand.

Here is a shorter way of putting this change:
"So in other words all that stuff John Kerry said that we ripped him for and called him soft on terror.  We'll actually that is what we need to do."

Neither GWOT and GSAVE are an end, but rather both are means to an end, that end being to foster one party rule, and establish the USA as the ONLY global superpower before the opportunity vanishes. GWOT has fulfilled its primary purpose of instilling enough doubt and fear to grant the President war powers beyond what the constitution authorizes.
 
As time passes and events unfold, new strategies are suggested much in the way an athletic team changes strategies at halftime to better respond to its adversary’s tactics. While undoubtedly some events did not unfold as expected. I believe it would be a serious mistake to assume incompetence. We must remember that Joe Wilson, Rep Waxman, and the IAEA forced the administrations hand in perhaps invading Iraq prematurely. The fact that intelligence was “fixed around policy” was about to be unambiguously exposed. I suggest we recognize the supreme skill with which the administration was able to pull off this blatant lie, as Paul Wolfowitz has suggested.

The difficulties, both in Iraq and at home, now suggest a different strategy. Struggle implies a vague objective, less amenable to benchmarks, and allows troops to be brought home (either in reality or in illusion) as warranted to reflect recruitment challenges, public unrest, and 2006 election requirements. Against allows one the ambiguity of being against, or for, depending on whether one emphasizes the acronym in part, or it total. Violent continues to justify extra-constitutional measures, and the ability to switch seamlessly between GWOT and GSAVE . And as George Lakoff suggests, Extremism may well have been especially carefully chosen, to “allow for suppression of domestic dissent”, as the term has already been applied to environmentalists and leftists, and is the change that is the most disturbing and dangerous. And of course, GSAVE as an acronym implies that we are not inflicting harm ala Abu Ghraib, but are doing something positive, ala the USA or Jesus saves, depending on your perspective.

But for Bush to accept the "Pentagon's view that the GWOT has failed and a new strategy is desperately needed" would imply an admission of a mistake, and as we all clearly recall from last year's debates, Bush seems incapable of acknowledging any form of policy error.

Oh, I don't know.  The people in the Bush administration have always seemed to be pretty adept at doublethink:

. . . the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

--George Orwell, 1984 

GWOT is doomed, the term that is.

Cynical me sees the Bushies changing the name in order to withdraw the military from Iraq. If its not a war, then why are they required there?

Just a preparation for abandoning Iraq before the 2006 elections, creating a reasonable talking point.

"What war?"

"Its up to the local goverment to lead the fight."

Which raises this question: How seriously should we take the change?

I don't know about this, but I would like Bush first to take his CinC responsibilities seriously.  Marines are dropping like flies in Iraq, and he takes off for five weeks holiday.   A pretty good indication of how little he actually cares about these men and women.

Anyone who thinks that John Bolton is working at cross purposes to the administration's new "multi-lateralist" approach just hasn't been paying attention. Multi-lateralism (as Bush's actions toward its ostensible allies in the coalition has demonstrated) has a different meaning for the Bush administration and the rest of us: it means boondoogling pragmatist regimes into supporting a US first policy. It's hard not to see Blair's decision to go along with the US as a concession to the fact that since Bush was going to go ahead, irrespective of the wishes of the international community, Great Britain might as well be on the winner's side (in a position to share in managing the outcome  -- i.e. to get a piece of the pie), remaining true to the long history of US-British collusion in attempting to control/manage the oil economy in the Middle East  (can you say  "Mossadeq"?). Remember what happened when Blair tried to use his so-called leverage with Bush? Nada, zip, zilch: this is the kind of multi-lateralism that Bolton brings to the UN, and the only kind that we're going to see in a Bush administration struggle against violend extremism: the assertion that US interests and policies are those of the international community, and that multi-lateralism means pursuing the policies espoused by the Cheney-Rove-Wolfowitz axis. Come on -- we've had more than four years to see how these folks work: the clearest of disjunctions between words and actions: preaching compassion, cooperation, non-partisanship while pursuing a single-mindedly partisan agenda. Do folks really think that when this administration says it's going to "work with other nations" it means that it's going to do anything other than it's been doing all along? Hey Charlie Brown, THIS time Lucy is really going to hold the ball for you without pulling it away. Really...trust me.

Does he have no sense of what this obscene war does to soldiers? To our country?

No, and no. I have seen nothing to indicate that he has any sense at all. In fact I am wondering why no one is pushing to get him replaced as mentally incompetent. I recall very well that we amended the Constitution just so that can be done. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for such a replacement, no matter how deranged the president is, and this one is one mighty deranged individual.

At the current metric of 2.1 deaths per day we'll lose approximately 73 more soldiers while Bush milks his horse...

for that you get a 5.

GWOT, GSAVE, whatever the hell these SOBs want to call their marketing campaign, let's just keep in mind that the 14 Marine Reservists from Ohio who were killed today burned to death when their amphib was blown up by an "improvised" explosive device that that flipped that big-ass mofo over twice before it landed upside down, completely engulfed in flames. 

"Improvised"?  I'd hate to see what they could do with something they planned to do that with.

Oh, right - this must be the "Battle of the Bulge" offensive of the "last throes" of the "insurgency."

May George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice and every other Republican chickenhawk burn in hell the way these kids burned today for 20 eternities!

We don't need to parse their language anymore, we don't need to try and see if they're willing to "admit mistakes" and change their tactics.  They're the Enemy.  They're scum.  They're futhermucking pissants.  I hope they all die alone in the dark in the cold from a socially-unacceptable and extremely painful disease.  Actually I hope Moron-Boy dies with a .21 Blood-Alcohol and the residue of 2 grams of cocaine in his system, riding his goddamned bicycle over a cliff down at the pig farm he calls a "ranch."

Yes, tonight I am thoroughly pissed off at these bastards.  I know kids who have ridden in those amphibs.

I stand a salute you!

Making these kids (and any of these soldiers and Marines under 45 is a kid to me) run around the desert enviorns in those ancient vehicles totally unsuitable for the comabt these men and women are having to serve in... 

It IS tantamount to murder.

Again - I salute you! 

What the hell? Why can every blog on the web manage to handle links correctly, except for TPMCafe?

"...don't include Rummy in the clear-headed thinkers here.

Careful, cscs.

When you drop hints about your possible employer like this one I worry about having someone from IMCEN frogmarch you out of your cubicle and into Rummy's office for a dress-down.