C.A.E.W.W.T.D.U.H.

Campaign Against Extremists Who Wish To Do Us Harm.

Although the White House officially denied banning the phrase “Global War On Terror,” Pepe Escobar wrote in The Asia Times:

As the Barack Obama administration releases the details of its strategic review of Afghanistan’s “good war”, an acronym-plagued global public opinion is confronted with a semantic dilemma: what in the world is happening to George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” (G.W.O.T.), then slyly rebranded by the Pentagon as “The Long War” (T.L.W.)?

It all started when a mid-level bureaucrat in the Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget sent an e-mail to the Pentagon stressing the White House was finally axing G.W.O.T. and giving birth to the delightfully Orwellian Overseas Contingency Operations(O.C.O.).

As it happens, no Taliban will be O.C.O.ed — at least for the moment. The White House and the Pentagon still rely on G.W.O.T. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell was adamant: “I’ve never received such a directive.” Asked by a reporter what nomenclature he would prefer, Morrell took no prisoners: “Another way to refer to it would be, you know, a campaign against extremists who wish to do us harm.” So exitG.W.O.T., enter C.A.E.W.W.T.D.U.H.

(Other vocabulary changes under the Obama administration include adopting the term Af-Pak, and ceasing to describe terror suspects as enemy combatants — see N.L.E.C.)