The Global War On You Know Who

"The West is facing a concerted effort by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the Western media, to destroy the West and bring it forcibly into the Islamic world -- and to commit violence to that end even while their overall goal remains out of reach. That effort goes under the general rubric of jihad."
-- Robert Spencer

Saturday, May 06, 2006

More GWOT Semantics

The cumbersome name of this blog was inspired by a U.S. Army NCO who, a couple of years ago, attended a one-week conference on the law of armed conflict. He observed that not one speaker mentioned the words "Islam," "Muslim," or "jihad" -- an impressive feat when one tries to imagine a similar conference in 1943 in which the words "German" or "Nazi" are never spoken. (Perhaps it would have been known as the Bi-Continental Tiff with Mustachioed Dictators.)

But as they say, it isn't your father's army anymore. Politically correct limits on speech -- and thus, thought -- are well understood by everyone in uniform. This trend was institutionalized by President Clinton's authorization of an "Equal Opportunity" officer in every unit, i.e., censors. Their job, among other things, is to reprimand soldiers when they're caught saying bad things about the enemy. Hence the asinine circumlocutions to avoid identifying the enemy, or his ideology or goals, with any specificity.

Of course, it's impossible to devise a coherent strategy against an enemy that remains undefined. "GWOT" (Global War On Terror) is the term of art these days, which allows reference to what all understand but are not permitted to say out loud. The demands of political correctness result in the tired overuse of this term, which is what prompted our fair NCO to return from the conference and snort, "they may as well call it the Global War on You Know Who."

The pencil-pushers invent new and even more absurd euphemisms all the time, and the most recent tongue-twister is especially entertaining. Their Excellencies at the U.S. State Department issued the annual country reports on terrorism last week, a document which lists Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizb'allah as terrorist organizations.

But not the Taliban, remnants of which are still busy killing people. No, the Taliban is "an insurgent organization that will periodically use terrorism to carry out its operations."

Great. So now it's the GWOIOTWPUTTCOIO. We have always been at war with Eastasia. We have never been at war with Eurasia. And we have never, ever, ever had the minutest quibble with any peace-loving follower of the noble Muslim religion, its visionary prophet and model for all humanity Muhammad (pbuh), or Allah, the supreme lawgiver whose Holy Koran must never be mocked or criticized.

The GWOIOTWPUTTCOIO's coiffured intellectuals excel at self-parody to the point where actual satire is becoming difficult to write. The weenies at State would better serve U.S. national security interests writing for the Daily Show than doing a grown-up's job.

One wonders if they at any point gave Andrew McCarthy's sarcastic proposal serious consideration: "The Thing Involving the Teeny-Tiny Number of People Who Made Certain Things Go Boom After Reading that Book that We Didn't Flush and Who Absolutely, Positively Do Not Represent the Vast, Enormous Majority of Very, Very Nice People Who Read the Same Book Without Making Anything Go Boom."

Yep. May as well call it the Global War on You Know Who.

1 Comments:

At 2:56 PM, Blogger Michael said...

Very true.

 

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