Monday, August 01, 2005

What's In A Name?

Andrew McCarthy today at NRO:

There was a good editorial in Friday's Dallas Morning News on the administration's latest foray into politically correct self-parody: namely, what to call the, y'know, er, the thing over there, um, like in Iraq and Afghanistan (i.e., the enterprise formerly known as "The War on Terror.")

The W-word is apparently out. Wouldn't want to refer to a war as a "war"...

So, what to call it? Here's the current top candidate (you'll need to book some time to get through the whole thing): "The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism."

Struggle? Fabulous! It'll be a real hit with the "Arab Street" we are so obsessed to impress with our pluperfect sensitivity. Memo to marketing: A common Arabic translation of the word "struggle" is JIHAD! You can just hear Al-Jazeera now (assuming you could hear in Arabic): "President Bush today proclaimed once again that he is determined to lead a 'global jihad' ..." Should play very well.

...Perfect: A war that's not called a war for fear of making people think about war, which is waged against an enemy who is not identified for fear of offending mass-murderers and the people who coddle them, and which occurs everywhere on the planet so no one is left out, but nowhere specific so no one is put in.
Read the whole thing.

The jihadists understand us better than we understand ourselves. We're in a fight with an enemy that has vowed to fight to the death and we're still worried about chipping our nailpolish.

Crossposted to The Wasatch Front.

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