Homeland Security Under-Secretary Wants War Terminology Tweaked

Just when we thought the pious worship of Political Correctness couldn’t get any sillier, today’s Financial Times reports that a high ranking Homeland Security official wants us to stop using the phrase “War on Terror” because it’s being “interpreted in the Muslim world as a war on Islam.” The suggestion surfaced in two memos including one from the National Counterterrorism Center entitled “Words that Work and Words That Don’t.” One wonders who at the NCC hemorraged their cerebrum thinking up that dazzling heading? The other erudite memo, issued by the Department of Homeland Security, stated, “The terminology the U.S. government uses should convey the magnitude of the threat we face, but also avoid inflating the religious bases and glamorous appeal of the extremists’ ideology.”

Question: Huh???

Can someone explain to me why the Muslim world is now equating the word terror with Islam after years of repeatedly and indignantly claiming that their religion is one of peace? Haven't we all been told ad nauseum that there's a huge difference between the religion of Islam and the fanatacism of terrorists? How can the phrase “war on terror” do anything to “inflate” the peace-loving Muslim religious base if the two are truly as far removed from one another as the East from the West…? And why is the Department of Homeland Security happily going along with all this blather without so much as a Whoa Nellie?

This protest reminds me a little of the Far Lefties who ranted and raved about President Bush calling them “appeasers” in his recent speech to Israel’s Parliament…when Bush was not in fact talking about them. Their misinterpretation and half-hysterical remonstrations revealed that they think of themselves as that dirtiest of modern wartime words: appeasers. One suspects this “Terror = Islam” objection is the same sort of cognitive math. We’re not saying the war on terror is a war on Islam, but the Muslim world is hearing it – because they already know the two often equate.

In any case, the United Muslims Against Accuracy seem to have some fans here in the America. A few international policy experts have suggested that we should re-name the challenge of our times as “A Global Struggle for Security and Progress.” Noble sounding, but vague. It also comes a bit too close for comfort to the enthusiastic slogans of “progress” and “modernism” espoused by Communist China and other totalitarian regimes. Not exactly the banner we want to be waving as we march around the world.

Additionally, the slogan falls short because we are largely engaged in a global struggle between – and not of – nations. Anyone who’s been paying attention for more than five minutes knows we can’t even agree on what progress should look like, nevermind how to team up and bring it about. The un-United Nations ruminates endlessly over what should be done on a thousand fronts as they grapple with the cold, hard fact that America’s “security and progress” is the nightmare of many world leaders. To pretend we are a part of a unified global community floating in a happy boat of common values and progressive agendas is to depart from the realms of PC politics and sail toward the sandy white shores of LaLa Land.

As I circle back on the moniker “war on terror,” allow me to suggest this snappy phrase for the next round of NCC and DHS memos: “War On Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime Who So Much As Breathes In the Direction of American Lives, Limbs, Liberties, and Lands”

That should do very nicely, now and forever. Semper Fi!