Army War College Critical of War on Terror

In a further shot at aWol's "War on Terra'," the Army War College authorized the publication of a paper exceptionally critical on the current direction of the War on Terror.

It'll come as no surprise to those in the center or left side of the blogosphere, but:

The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point."

It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.

Record goes on to say that the Iraq misadventure was a dangerous distraction from the more important focus on al Qaeda.

This has not been a good day for the administration with the major war-fighting colleges of their own military. This is important stuff. Read the rest of this article in the Washington Post on-line here. Read the whole report at the Strategic Studies Institute, here.

UPDATE:A paragraph from the SSI report that is the perfect description of why aWol's Global War on Terror (GWOT) seems oddly detached from any discernable or achievable goal:

“Terrorism” as a word and concept became associated in US
and Israeli discourse with anti-state forms of violence that were
so criminal that any method of enforcement and retaliation
was viewed as acceptable, and not subject to criticism. By so
appropriating the meaning of this infl ammatory term in such a
self-serving manner, terrorism became detached from its primary
historical association dating back to the French Revolution. In
that formative setting, the state’s own political violence against
its citizens, violence calculated to induce widespread fear and
achieve political goals, was labeled as terrorism.

Bold emphasis mine. Charles2