Barack Obama adviser rejects 'global war on terror'

John Brennan, a former career CIA officer who worked closely with the Bush administration, lambasted the policies of President George W Bush and made the case for a broader approach to fighting Islamic extremism.

Mr Bush's policies, he said in a speech in Washington, had run counter to American values, undermined the security and resulted in a "global war" mindset that served to "validate al-Qaida's twisted world-view".

All this, he insisted, would change under Mr Obama. "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism – whether they are with us or against us – the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas."

The term "global war on terror", which became so prevalent under Mr Bush that it earned its own acronym – GWOT – would be a thing of the past.

The notion of a "global" war "plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the US is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world", he said, while terrorism was a tactic not end.

"And ultimately, confusing ends and means is self-defeating, because you can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself."

He denounced "the inflammatory rhetoric, hyperbole and intellectual narrowness that has often characterised the debate over the president's national security policies." In part, the speech appeared to be a shot back at former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been Mr Obama's most outspoken critic on anti-terrorism policy.

Mr Brennan, who was widely tipped to become Mr Obama's CIA chief but withdrew himself from contention after critics from the Left accused him of complicity in Mr Bush's "enhanced interrogation" programme, advocated a multi-tiered approach, expanding economic and educational opportunities across the Muslim world.

"We cannot shoot ourselves out of this challenge," he said. "If we fail to confront the broader political, economic and social conditions in which extremists thrive, then there will always be another recruit in the pipeline, another attack coming downstream."

As well as targeting al-Qaeda, the US military would train the security forces of allies, supporting democratic reform and doling out billions of dollars of aid to impoverished regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He denounced the CIA's use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" methods which, he said, served only as "a recruitment bonanza for terrorists, increase the determination of our enemies and decrease the willingness of other nations to co-operate with us".

Mr Brennan cited Somalia as an example where the US could channel its economic power to help nations increase their security and dissuade their citizens from embracing violence.

"The most effective long-term strategy for safeguarding the American people is one that promotes a future where a young man or woman never even considers joining an extremist group in the first place, where they reject out of hand the idea of picking up that gun or strapping on that suicide vest."

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