'War on terror' label was a mistake, says Britain's No 10

[bigtree]

15.01.09

David Miliband drew a line under the George Bush era today by admitting the "war on terror" was a mistake.

The Foreign Secretary said the term may have done "more harm than good" and perhaps even strengthened the hand of violent extremists.

In an interview that anticipated the handover of power next Tuesday from President Bush to Barack Obama, he said the West could not "kill its way" to safety from terrorist threats.

Candidly admitting some of the mistakes made since 2001, he said it had been wrong to attempt to characterise the complex battle against radical Islamists as a struggle between good and evil. "Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good," Mr Miliband said of the phrase "war on terror".

"The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common . . . We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is. Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology.

Writing in the Guardian, Mr Miliband said the term "implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one: to track down and kill a hard-core of extremists".

Instead, democracies should counter violence by "championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, for it is the cornerstone of the democratic society. We must uphold our commitments to human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad."


read: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23620153-details/%27War+on+terror%27+label+was+a+mistake,+says+No+10/article.do

[DCKit]

1. Dude should'a read DU. Maybe even listened to his own country(wo)men. Duh. n/t