Call Islamic terrorism what it is

Ramesh Ponnuru
6 hours ago

Terrorism.
Hillary Clinton has twisted herself into a pretzel on the subject of terrorism and its connection to Islam. Like many Democrats, she says that we must choose our words carefully to avoid scapegoating peaceful Muslims or driving them into the terrorists' arms. But the words she has chosen won't help achieve our foreign-policy goals or help peaceful Muslims – because they make no sense.

In a Nov. 19 speech on how to combat Islamic State, Clinton argued that our rhetoric is part of our strategy: "Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The obsession in some quarters with a clash of civilization, or repeating the specific words 'radical Islamic terrorism' isn't just a distraction, it gives these criminals, these murderers more standing than they deserve. It actually plays into their hands by alienating partners we need by our side."
These were prepared remarks. One might be tempted to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt anyway and assume she meant to imply that "most" Muslims are as swell as she says. Surely she doesn't mean to deny that some Muslims leave something to be desired in the peaceful-and-tolerant department.
But other Democratic foreign-policy luminaries are saying similarly far-fetched things. John Kerry, Clinton's successor as secretary of state, said a few days before her speech that the Islamic State's barbarism "has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism – I mean, you name it."
Nothing to do with Islam? Does anyone think we're going to find professed atheists among these psychopaths? Kerry obviously wanted to condemn Islamic State and its allies while not lumping in most Muslims with them. He could have simply noted that most Muslims reject terrorism, that many call it a perversion of Islam, and that he hopes this view prevails among more and more of them. Unlike what he actually said, none of that would have been absurd.
Clinton also spoke for others in rejecting the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism." Liberal pundits say it's "ugly." The Democratic Party is running an ad alleging that it equates all Muslims with terrorists and incites fear. But to invoke "radical Islamic terrorists" logically implies that it is possible to be other Islamic things: for example, a kindhearted Islamic scholar. So it wasn't bigoted when Clinton, in 2005, gave a speech criticizing "radical Islamist extremists."
It's possible that some Muslims who hear that phrase will wrongly conclude that the speaker is expressing enmity toward all Muslims. But some misunderstandings are inevitable -- and, in any case, Clinton's preferred terminology does nothing to reduce their likelihood.
At the most recent Democratic debate, Clinton condemned "radical jihadist ideology" in her opening statement. She used versions of "jihad" five other times that night. Everyone knows the religion with which jihad is associated. She didn't call it a "radical Crusaderist ideology." She's talking about a subset of Muslims, just as the Republicans who talk about "radical Islamic terrorists" are.
If using the word "Islam" in the vicinity of "terrorism" is a bad idea, then so is using the word "jihadism" to mean, well, Islamic terrorism. So it isn't surprising that the J-word has run into the same criticism. In 2009, John Brennan, then an adviser to President Barack Obama and now head of the CIA, said that the administration disavowed the term "jihadism" for pretty much the same reasons Clinton dislikes "radical Islamic terrorism": It "risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek" and "it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself."
All this tortured diction is pointless. We're at war with people who believe that Islam justifies mass murder. There's no way to conduct that war without giving some people the impression that we're at war with Islam, period. And there is such a thing as going too far to try to avoid giving that impression. When that imperative leads officials to say things that can't be believed, it sends the opposite message from what they intend: It suggests that our leaders are expressing obvious untruths because they can't acknowledge that Islam really is our enemy.
I suspect, in other words, that the nothing-to-see-here denial of any link between Islam and terrorism has a symbiotic relationship with anti-Muslim prejudice. If you insist that the alternative to distrusting Muslims in general is to pretend that there's no such thing as Islamist terrorism, then some people will figure that distrust is safer.
They'll also figure that they can't believe anything you have to say on related subjects. The latest Washington Post/ABC poll shows that 54 percent of the public opposes taking in Syrian refugees. Maybe the majority is right and maybe it's wrong, but I can't help thinking that the number would be lower if the people calling for letting the refugees come here weren't the same people who say that "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism."

Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist,
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2015/11/28/call-islamic-terrorism/76455768/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin= http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2015/11/28/call-islamic-terrorism/76455768/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=/

We are slowly being devoured by political correctness.

In a discussion of the Paradox of Freedom, by Plato ...

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

― Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

Islam is an enemy to an open society.

Applause sound effect: http://youtu.be/heAw4z71lvo/

Absolutely!
From this day forward, terrorists shall be referred to as,
"The Obonzo brotherhood".

when will there no more sand.....then no more conflic.....the central definition..........."even more thirsty for the trees then texas......LOL

Come on.. pass it around Nailcap.. don't be a Bogart.

That'd be Reagan gang, I mean administration.

OMG,now they even going back further with the blaming-Game than Bush!
Holy Mackerel!

Deep. Very deep. I feel you and I agree with Plato and Popper, getting isil onboard may be a bit of a problem. The #1 issue with this is democracy vs. a mock theocracy. They are within their right to choose not to be Christians, but to have an actual theocracy you need a State. They CLAIM a statehood, yet the two states they CLAIM have their own governments and thus their CLAIM of statehood/caliphate is FALSE.
Problem #2 is that during Platos time the news traveled only as fast as the current or the fastest rider could get a horse there. There was no alternate to spoken or written word on scrolls or parchment. Isil has YouTube Facebook Twitter snapchat and the list goes on. There are even encrypted apps that they alone can read. They can send messages across the world faster than a messenger could mount his horse.
Logic and reason are great. We can have a conversation and express different views, cite evidence or literature, but problem #3 is they don't. They being isil and other extremist or terrorist groups. Nobody fights a battle a war a conflict to say 'I died in ____ war'. It's counterproductive, counterintuitive, illogical and downright stupid. I have yet to see a dead man take part in a victory celebration. They don't attack westerners because it's reasonable, useful, or profitable. While isil may be stealing oil currently, look at how much oil has been destroyed since we entered Iraq. Tons, you probably couldn't count the barrels as many times as the oilfields have been attacked or set a blaze. Even if they sold them for 1/4 price they'd be millions of monetary units richer than they are now. Do their peons and lackeys know this? No. They're splattered on a wall somewhere.
Problem #4 while isil's higher ups might be Muslim, their recruits don't have to be. Those punks who they got doing their dirt in Paris are a prime example. Saint Denis is known to be a haven for hoodlums, drinking and using drugs which is against their religion. In an Arabic country they would be beaten, jailed, possibly even put to death. Isil doesn't care whether or not these recruits are Muslim, were Christians before atheist, drunks, junkies, as long as they know how to pull a trigger or blow up. The female cousin who died in the raid was said never to have picked up a Quran before the weeks before the attack.

There are more problems but the biggest problem the West needs to understand is that they watch read listen to us and our news. Every time 'we' call them what they CLAIM to be it reinforces THEIR lie and gives them more recruiting clout. It pulls in higher numbers of eventual walking ordinance. Isil's leader has made only a few public appearances. Why not? Because he knows he can't. They don't even want people to come to them anymore because they are spread too thin as it is they call for people to make attacks in place. That's not jihad, if the attackers aren't Muslim, aren't Arabic citizens, that's not even close to jihad. Suicide bombing isn't jihad. European plastic explosives aren't jihad, they're an abomination of the 'infidels'. Jihad is holy war. Death in battle is not a planned suicide bombing with no holy ground reclaimed or no reward at all. That's not even a battle, its a crime.
So by reason, if they aren't jihadis, they're not Muslim, they're not fighting a holy war against another religion but a civil war(s) with people of their own religion, they just commit sporadic terror attacks on land they could never seize in earnest, they cannot even capture a state in which to seat their CLAIMED caliphate, then they cannot be Islamic terrorist or an Islamic State. They are radical they are a problem but they are not radical Islamics. They are traitorous cowards who cannot even carry out their own suicide bombings. They are traitorous cowards who rape rob and pillage their own countrymen and their own religion for their own enjoyment. Calling them anything other than the traitorous cowards they are only helps the. Call them what they really are, not who or what they claim to be.

Otay...


That be an MLK thang.

You forgot to put a hook in your bait. No line either...

Then what? is that means the oil is all? They needs no foods no settlements unhealthy socially system both educational system and others? to me 3 or 4 people needs about 667 m2 for garentee the primary food for the whole years where I'm living. had you ever try to calculating the life it self needed for daily? that's not funny. And that's only the detail of the poorest people. And it.s full of water everywhere where I'm living now. And this is the step one only for rice. Then ?

It's not Islamic terrorism. It's ISIS terrorism, which is sponsored by the U.S., Britain and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia spends over 2 billion dollars a year to promote its terrorist version of Islam and the U.S. and Britain don't care. They like it, because they want population reduction and they make lots of money in the arms race.

Everyone cant be the Master Baiter you are GC..

Bullmalarkey,it's the continuation of a 1400 year old war!

I wish I could buy the world a copy of Mein Khamp.


If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Adolf Hitler

By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.
Adolf Hitler

The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.
Adolf Hitler

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.
Adolf Hitler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Hch1rxiko&feature=youtu.be

Meanwhile, back in this universe . . .

ZZZZZZZIIINNNNNGGGG!!!! Game, Set, and Match! <high-fives Reb>