Stop Enabling The War Frame – We Need to Think in Terms of Occupation and Beyond Just a Military Solution

The following was originally posted on The Citizens Briefing Book:

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Iraq. Referring to the Iraq War is absurd!

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Afghanistan.

We need to refer to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as an occupation. Using the occupation frame eliminates the fear of losing, enables our departure, reduces the chances of bankrupting our nation, and supports our troops by bring them home.

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Terror is a state of mind. We can’t win a “War on Terror.” We will never defeat terrorism with just military action. We are only creating more terrorists with our military actions. Worse yet, we elevate these criminals to warrior status in a jihad. We give them far more credit than they are due and enable recruitment. We must treat them as lowly “common criminals.”

As Colin Powell said on September 13, 2001 in an interview with Jim Lehrer, “We are asking all the nations to join together to use political action, diplomatic action, economic action, legal action, law enforcement action, and if necessary, join with us as appropriate and if necessary in military action when we have identified the perpetrators and decided what military action might be appropriate. And so there is a lot that we can do. And the point I also want to make is that no country is safe from this kind of attack. It crosses every geographic boundary, social boundary, religious boundary, cultural boundary. And we must see it in those terms and respond in a unified way.”

We have many tools to use against these [common criminals]. Using only the military, we will never never succeed!