On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, co-host Mike Barnicle suggested that, given the nation’s short attention span, it may be time to drop the idea of an ongoing, long-term ‘War on Terror.’
“One of the things that’s in play here is our culture itself,” Barnicle, a Massachusetts native, said live from Boston. “Our attention span increasingly as a society is shorter and shorter. Sept. 11 seems to some people as if it were 200 years ago. We have the phrase War on Terror. Do you think it is perhaps now necessary as we ease into the second decade of the 21 century, that we reinforce with people in this country that it is ‘a Daily Duel with Terror’? Not a War on Terror — a ‘Daily Duel with Terror.’”
Barnicle’s guest, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, agreed with Barnicle’s proposal, calling it “appropriate” given the circumstances.
“Mike, what you’re talking about precisely the shift in language that I think maybe now is appropriate as a kind of opportunity that this terrible event provides,” Suskind said. “You know, that’s part of how we grow and mature as a nation.”