Here's the New Phrase for 'War on Terror' ...

... It's 'Countering Violent Extremism,' or CVE
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 20, 2010 6:38 PM CDT
Here's the New Phrase for 'War on Terror' ...
FBI investigators at a home in Watertown, Mass., earlier this month.   (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

President Obama's national security officials have quietly replaced the phrase "war on terror" with—drum roll, please—Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE, writes Marc Ambinder. "Though there hasn't been any formal announcement, folks in the counteterrorism business are now using CVE in the same way they used GWOT—Global War On Terror—just five years ago," he writes at his Atlantic blog.

The phrase is notable in part because it lacks the word "war," writes Ambinder. "The administration has put de-radicalization alongside the Predator drones as a primary instrument of combat. No mention of Islam, of course. That's because the administration wants to try and decouple the notion of combating terrorism from the Muslim faith itself." Ambinder also gives due credit to Newsweek, which picked up on it first in a speech.
(More War on Terror stories.)

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