At Robert Gibbs' first briefing as White House press secretary last Thursday, I asked if President Obama had decided not to use the "war on terror" catch phrase that the Bush-Cheney crowd had coined. After all, earlier in the day, when Obama was signing executive orders banning torture and setting a deadline for shutting Gitmo, the new president had not used that three-word term. This question got one of the shortest replies of the briefing, as Gibbs said that Obama was using language consistent with his inaugural address (in which Obama said, "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred") and that he (Gibbs) was not aware of any decision on Obama's part to scuttle the WOT characterization. Later in the day, while speaking at the State Department, Obama did refer to the "war on terror," in a glancing way.

Despite Gibbs' answer and Obama's reference to the "war on terror," I wondered if the president has an aversion to the term--which would be a good thing. Terror is an abstraction. You cannot defeat an abstraction. And the WOT offers a rather expansive--and easy to abuse--definition of the problem at hand. The United States is confronted by, as Obama said, a particular (though somewhat amorphous) network of evildoers. The enemy is this group, not the notion of terror. And it's still debatable whether "war" is the most appropriate way of describing this challenge.

Gibbs' answer did not resolve the issue, nor did Obama's quick mention of the WOT on Thursday afternoon. And the next day, at Gibbs' second press briefing, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett took another swing at it. He asked,

President Bush, after 9/11, said the United States and its government was engaged in a war on terror. Is that what this administration calls it, and if not, why?

Gibbs replied: