An Ominous Warning From The American Thinker -- Strategic Collapse in the War on Terror

From The American Thinker:

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.

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My Comment: The West have clearly failed in providing a message that is an alternative to jihadist thinking. The fact that much of our policy is done by people with a mostly secularist background complicates fighting this battle because of its religious undertones.

But the question begs the answer ..... can we fight a religious battle with our liberal and secular traditions? My opinion .... in the present form the answer is no. In todays world our two cultures, traditions, and history are completely different .... and to bridge this gap will take an incredibly long time to even come to some simple form of understanding. If we had the time this would be a noble undertaking. Unfortunately, because of Islam's own internal conflicts, we in the West are now finding ourselves in the crosshairs of what has been a very long conflict.

To succeed, we must better define the enemy. We must also have the leadership willing to say the things that our liberal and secular traditions may frown upon. We must also .... unfortunately .... accept the fact that the use of military forces is not only required but also necessary. We must also have the leaders to outline that this conflict has been going on for a very long time, and that we must be mentally prepared that a resolution to all of this may take a very long time .... generations if necessary. We must also win. The establishment in the world of a violent and aggressive militant Islamic state would not only be a disaster for us .... but also for all of mankind.