Posted on 05/04/2008 8:45:04 AM PDT by MaximusRules
Words matter, and in the global war on terror we are losing the battle of words, in a self-inflicted defeat. The consequences could not be more profound.
Recent government policy memoranda, circulating through the national counter-terrorism and diplomatic community, establishes a new "speech code" for the lexicon in the war on terror, as reported by the Associated Press and now available in the public domain.
These new "speech codes" recommended that analysts and policy makers avoid the terms jihad or jihadist or mujhadid or "al-Qaida movement" and replace them with "extremists" and by extension other non-specific terms...
This is more than simply dancing on the pinhead of cultural sensitivity-words have meaning, ideas have consequences.
This policy is a strategic collapse.
It does nothing to improve our strategic comprehension of the threat or improve our foreign strategic communications; in fact it reinforces existing conceptual problems and risks confusing our messaging with our own actual knowledge of the jihadist threat...
War is a complex endeavor, there are no silver-bullet weapons, theories, words or phrases that will disarm our enemies or shape the cultural attitudes of the jihadists or other fellow Muslims. Only how the Islamic world doctrinally perceives and receives the claims of legitimacy of al-Qaida and the rest of the global Islamic movement will determine that outcome -- not any mincing of words by the West...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“Recent government policy memoranda”, “This policy is a strategic collapse.”
It’s not policy. From the report:
“This memorandum does not state official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy nor does it address legal definitions. Rather, it outlines recommendations compiled by the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL)....”
Reasons for some of the recommendations do make sense: like not legitimizing alQaeda and/or terrorists. - not that I agree with all the conclusions/rationale in the documents.
Correct but the intent is that it become “defacto policy” via senior leadership adopting the PC speak...
Same effect.
In fact I think the DHS and NCTC documents are disengenous in that regard...the DHS memo is promulgated by the Civil Liberties division [the multicultural police].
I believe that Pres. Bush is still using the words “jihadists” and “Liberty”, which the documents recommend against. So let’s not all get our panties in a wad over this.
And if people read the documents, they should conclude that not all the suggestions are bad ones.
Maybe it will be adopted as policy if the Democrats take over. Though they’ll have worse language policy, for all the wrong reasons, no doubt.
The “moderate” Muslims are either afraid to speak out or are complicit. We have to face where we are. The Western World is in a world war with Islam. They are killing people and fomenting trouble around the world. They have infiltrated us here with willing accomplices. They are trying to change our culture, and they are succeeding.
Words won’t do it unless they are formed into concepts. So far the only concept seems to be whack-a-mole.
The first strategic error was failing to establish a formal declaration of war against islamic terror states and those terrorist organizations that are aided by them. The second error was then defining this war as a war against a technique and not personifying it as a war against Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban etc...
So now, we fight a war of politically correct semantics while our islamic enemies fight their war in full with no feel good filters to tie them down.
Just kill the terrorist SOBs. That way no one’s feelings get hurt.
The curent administration has been oblivious to this side of the islamic offensive here at home. The greatest threat posed by jihad is that the West including the US will fall without a shot fired, from within. So far the islamics have been winning battles consistently on our own soil. And idiots like Bush go about bragging that no attack has occurred since 9/11.
Sort of like Carter yammering about how he and Leonid Breshnev "shared the same goals for the world" while another country fell to soviet tyranny every four months during his misbegotten regime.
Just kill the terrorist SOBs.
Not so easy. They are everywhere among us. The koran is a book of terror. Muslims keep coming into the US. Some convert to Christianity but not enough.
If we get serious about them the world economy will collapse. OPEC (muslim owned) will retaliate be assured.
We have no energy plan.
Where were we????
OUTSTANDING article by Joseph C. Myers. Thanks very much for posting.
MUST READ BUMP!
PING!
More discussion here...
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020881.php#comments
Thanks to Robert Spencer, Hugh Fitzgerald’s outstanding 1st comment, and all of the fabulous posters/educators/researchers at jihadwatch.
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