By Xinhua,
Washington : A Pentagon-commissioned study published Wednesday said the Bush administration’s 7-year-old war-on-terror is off target.
The report, done by Rand Corp. under a Pentagon commission, said the current strategy for defeating al Qaida has not been successful and is unlikely to do better without a shift in emphasis.
It said since 2001, al Qaida has conducted a greater number of attacks across a larger geographic area than at any time in its history.
The authors evaluate al Qaida since 2001 as being both “strong” and “competent.”
Therefore, the study calls for “fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy” to focus on minimizing overt military action and increasing intelligence collection and partnerships with law enforcement agencies around the world.
The report could not have been clearer in its refutation of one of the pillars of the Bush administration’s war-on-terror strategy: the characterization of the conflict as a “global war.”
But the 200-page report suggests that using the label “global war” skews priorities and sends the wrong political message.
“Almost all of our allies, from the Great Britain to Australia, have stopped using the concept of a global war on terror,” it noted.