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“A reliable source has informed me that Condoleeza Rice has approved a new lexicon for State Department usage, absolutely forbidding the use of the terms "jihad" and "jihadist" by any State Department official.” -- Robert Spencer
Without intelligent use of the word "Jihad," a word both accurate and useful (these qualities do not always coincide), a word that demands to be explained, and in that explanation -- the same kind of explanation that the word "dhimmi" calls for, Infidels will be forced to learn certain home truths about the meaning, and menace, of Islam.
By banning use of the word "Jihad," Rice makes much more difficult the intelligent dissemination of information about Islam. She makes more difficult the task of seeing the war of self-defense in all of its dimensions, and furthermore, far from encouraging peace, defined as the absence of open warfare through military means, makes such open warfare through such means more likely, by preventing the United States and other Infidel lands, from working to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam and Jihad. That can only take place, it is clear, once the conflict is understood, and once the most effective instruments of Jihad are grasped, and the monomaniacal emphasis on "terrorism" has come, as it must, to an end. For that emphasis has served to divert attention from the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and most important of all, demographic conquest that, in Western Europe, proceed without Infidel governments taking the kind of minimal measures that, at any other time in history, would long ago have been sensibly undertaken.
Whatever the peoples of the West may have lacked in the past -- cars and computers, say -- they did at least forthrightly, uninhibitedly, recognize the nature of Islam, its meaning, its menace. Rice wishes to prevent this, in order to curry favor with Arab states, and possibly in order to prevent having to begin the difficult work (but hardly too difficult) of figuring out the kinds of things that might best work to weaken the Camp of Islamic Jihad. Those ways have all been set out here, over the past few years -- often in great detail. But Rice hasn't time in her datebook. She hasn't space in her brain, to consider how best, how most effectively, how at the least cost, without all the squandering (of men, money, materiel, morale both civilian and military) that the Iraq folly continues to cause, to undo or hold in check the forces of Jihad.
She's in over her head, and not waving, but drowning.
And despite all this, a Jihad Watch commenter said in the wake of this news that "our administration is doing just fine."
The Bush Administration has had nearly seven years to educate itself, and then to help educate those whose duty it is to instruct and to protect, in the nature of Islam, and in the meaning, and instruments, and goals, of Jihad. It has failed completely to do so. In fact, it has chosen to squander men, money, materiel in Iraq, in a venture that, if it might conceivably be justified initially, is so no longer. And that initial justification depends on one's judgment in the Administration's presentation of, and belief in, evidence concerning weapons, and ongoing projects to produce weapons of mass destruction by the regime of Saddam Hussein. For that was the argument presented to Congress -- that and that alone, and not the idiotic bringing of "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in Iraq, or any other such impossible and irrelevant nonsense. Such nonsense stands in the way of the icy exploitation of ethnic and, especially, sectarian fissures that, once openly on display with the removal of the iron hand of Saddam Hussein, could have led, and can still lead -- and indeed inevitably will lead, as soon as the Americans get out of the way -- to a situation that will demand the attention, and the volunteers, and the materiel, and above all the money, of both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and will necessarily cause difficulties within many Muslim countries, including Yemen, Bahrain, Pakistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia (in the Eastern Province populated by Shi'a), well beyond the immediate and permanent problems that will remain in Iraq.
Having used up -- having squandered -- so much political capital in Iraq, the Administration has failed completely to deal with Iran. And if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, one can thank those who were so convinced that the Iraq Project made sense, though no one has yet been able to utter an articulate paragraph explaining just how the stated desired outcome or goals of the Bush Administration in Iraq would help weaken the Camp of Islamic Jihad or, for example, lessen the threat of the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest in the threatened lands of Western Europe. They haven't explained this, because they can't.
And the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and failure to explain the nature of Jihad, has made it domestically harder to obtain from Congress the support necessary for domestic security measures that make sense, if explained by an administration that had a policy that made sense. But the Iraq policy does not make sense. It makes the very opposite of sense. American forces should leave Iraq, indeed should have started to leave by February or March 2004 (by that time Saddam Hussein had been captured, his sons killed, his chief collaborators captured or killed, and the country scoured for weapons and weapons projects).
But the Bush loyalists, incapable of independent analysis, and still so incapable, saw support for the idiotic Iraq War as a test of wills with those they deem "lefties" (or some such vulgarism). And so they continue to pour this nonsense into the ear of McCain, who if he does not come to understand that the American forces should leave Iraq not because the Total Belief-System of totalitarian Islam is not a great and universal menace, but precisely because it is, will undoubtedly lose the election. And at least one of his potential opponents apparently has views on Islam that rival those of Jimmy Carter, indeed is a Carter in posse waiting to become one in esse.
"Our administration is doing just fine."
"Our" administration could hardly be doing worse.
Posted by Hugh at April 23, 2008 8:20 AM
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This reminds me of the occasion a few months ago when Alan Colmes on Hannity and Colmes was arguing people should not use the word "Islamic" to describe any organization. It was as if he had no comprehension that Muslims themselves use that word to name their organizations. It's the Jaysh al-Iraq al-Islami (Islamic Army in Iraq) and the Dawlat al-Iraq al-Islami (The Islamic State of Iraq) and Jamiat al-Jihad al-Islami (The Islamic Jihad Organization) etc. etc. To even name these organizations without using that word is ludicrous. The same holds true for trying to avoid the word jihad or jihadist.
Posted by: ed![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 23, 2008 9:06 AM
I say JK Rowling is a prophet! She identified the mindset of the bureaucrats long before they began to say: He Who Must not be Named....
Condoleeza Riso Amara; Con molto tristezza ma senza condoglianza.
at April 23, 2008 9:22 AM
One fairly minor detail has been omitted in all of this: There has NEVER been an official declaration of “War.” We are not at war but simply in a “conflict.” When a state declares war the state is basically saying, “We are going to totally defeat you and we are committed to it.” In a conflict there is no focused commitment to do WHATEVER is required finish the job. So in conflicts the invading state just gets bled dry. It happened to the USSR in Afghanistan, it happened to the US in Vietnam, and it is happening to the US now in Iraq. All the while the world watches, and other states see the weakness and take advantage of it. So what Rice has basically stated is that the West is in "conflict" with Islam. There is no total committment to force Islam to change in order to live with the West. Rice is drowning, and all she is getting is life preservers made out of barbed wire. But it was her decision to get on the sinking boat to begin with. I have no pity for her as nothing succeeds like failure in these times.
Posted by: never_submit at April 23, 2008 10:44 AM
I thought only liberals play these silly PC wordgames? That is what it is, a word game. Like trying to sell the war in Iraq as bringing freedom to poor oppressed Muslims or enforcing UN resolutions, pitched at people who could give a rat's butt about either.
Posted by: Dumbo at April 23, 2008 11:03 AM
Hey jihadwatch guys, in today's Washington Post, Richard Holbrooke is giving himself an "A" for the "success" of the Dayton Accords with regards to rooting out Al-Qaeda in Bosnia. Someone needs to respond to this B.S.
Here is the link and the offending passage:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042202522.html
"We were concerned with the presence in Bosnia of a little-known group of Islamist extremists who would later become infamous as al-Qaeda. In the Dayton Agreement, we required their removal and gave NATO the right to attack them. Without Dayton, al-Qaeda would probably have planned the Sept. 11 attacks from Bosnia, not Afghanistan."
at April 23, 2008 12:07 PM
And despite all this, a Jihad Watch commenter said in the wake of this news that "our administration is doing just fine."
Dear oh dear some people are just so disconnected from reality it hurts to read their comments, sounds like an LGF drone to me.
Anybody care to name and shame, I would be interested in knowing so I can scroll past any future comments from them.
at April 23, 2008 1:36 PM
never _submit, the war that is not a war began with our U.N. 'conflict' in Korea and has been the template for war ever since. Soon Israel, facing annihilation and with rockets raining down will perhaps show us what a WAR looks like.
Posted by: poetcomic1 at April 23, 2008 2:26 PM
Yes poetcomic, you are correct on that. I'm not a warmonger per se, but war settles things. With no war there is no real peace because nothing ever gets settled. States just pick away at each other and the end result is more death and more suffering in the long run. Israel will be forced to use her arsenal, and it will be much sooner and much more spectacular that we can imagine. I'd hate to be in Syria.
Posted by: never_submit at April 23, 2008 3:22 PM
The Washington Post article by Holbrooke disappoints. Among the three known foreign policy advisers to Clinton -- Samuel Berger, Madeline Albright, and Holbrooke -- he was the only one who one suspected had a glimmer of understanding, or might be made to understand, more about Islam, even though he starts with a handicap. That handicap is his experience with a very unrepresentative group of westernized Muslims in the Balkans who, furthermore, could, not entirely without reason, be seen more as sinned against than sinning. Holbrooke, of course, did not know what lay behind the appeal of Milosevich, did not know the fears that Izetbegovic aroused with his published remarks about re-introducing the Shari'a, did not know what hundreds of years of Ottoman rule had done to the Balkans and to Serbians, did not know about the devshirme, did not know so much else that, had he known, might have made him see things not quite so starkly, and perhaps have realized that whatever the crimes of Milosevich, they were not to be attributed to the Serbs, who are permanently part of the West (how could they not be?) and in the war of self-defense against the Jihad (which Holbrooke still does not recognize, for it is too early for him as for so many others to do so), Serbia is an ally not to be bullied, but to be supported.
Posted by: Hugh at April 23, 2008 3:43 PM
Hugh,
The Holbrooke Washington Post article left out an important rating factor:
Preventing Bosnia from turning into an Islamic terrorist state.
Grade: F
As for Condoleeza Rice, her idiocy regarding the use of the word jihad is matched by her insistance on referring to Hamas as a "resistance group". God forbid she malingers on in a McCain administration (VP? ... not just no, ... hell no!).
at April 23, 2008 5:48 PM
km, see here.
But don't scroll indiscriminately, just because you disagree with someone about something.
Posted by: special_guest at April 23, 2008 7:05 PM
I am deeply disturbed that people like Condi are making world policy. She should not hold any position higher than a receptionist
Posted by: hemoglobin at April 23, 2008 10:31 PM
Agreed, Hugh. Dr. Rice, "W", Karen Hughes, Gordon England,and the lot of them are all in way over their heads. It is pathetic to watch. It's actually embarassing to listen to Dr. Rice prattle on, likening the Palestinian situation to that of black Americans during the '60s civil rights movement.
And I see no event on the horizon, short of another catastrophic attack on the order of 9/11, that may inspire anyone in the halls of power to actually do some studying in the ways of Islam.
Bush failed us miserably here.
In the meantime, the Muslims incrementally gain ground in imposing Sharia upon us. Europe is lost forever.
Thanks for your courage and your great work.
Posted by: INFIDELATLARGE at April 23, 2008 10:40 PM
What are we suppose to call them now? Angry Muslim Men with No Libido Hoping to Get Lucky With 72 Virgins in the Afterlife?
Sorry too long. I'll stick to Jihadist. Easier to say and spell.
Posted by: Mystical Time Traveler at April 23, 2008 11:33 PM
Iraqi Christians gain refuge and complete freedom of movement in Iraqi Kurdistan (unlike Shia refugees who are confined to camps) because "we know the Christians aren't terrorists"...
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=85879628-34CD-4C9B-A4A6-604C11850D16
Some here insist that America can withdraw from Iraq and still determine outcomes for the Iraqi Kurds. Don't count on it people. If Iraq succumbs to the radical Islamists - either under Sunni or Shia hegemony, a free Kurdistan is bound to be subsumed by the creation (or reconstitution) of a Kurdish Islamist front group like Ansar al Islam that will work aggressively to overturn Kurdistan's remarkably moderate society. And the American public, fresh on the heels of walking away, is not about to stomach a re-involvement in Iraq on behalf of the Kurds, despite the fantasies of some of our friends here at JW.
Leaving Iraq may or may not be in the best interests of the USA, but let us not delude ourselves into believing that there will be no negative repercussions, particularly for Iraq's Kurds and remaining Christians.
Posted by: Cornelius at April 24, 2008 6:42 AM
(I apologize if someone else has referred to this in the list of comments above and I somehow missed it. I also posted this same comment on a similar story about Rice on JW.)
About a year ago a story briefly surfaced about Rice's executive assistant, an attractive young Pakistani woman, I believe it was, who was very influential in shaping Rice's views. Anyone else remember this story, and the name involved?
Posted by: Eastview at April 24, 2008 7:10 AM
how about more attention being given to Condi's little friends in Kossovo who seized live Serbs in order to extract their body parts and sell them??? This story has gotten little attention in the English-speaking world. See link:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2008/04/condoleezza-rice-embraces-anti-israel.html
Condi advocated the cause of giving the gangster Albanian Muslim govt of Kossovo independence. As if the leaders there were not white slavers, drug smugglers, body parts and organ sellers, etc.
Can Hugh explain the Muslim aspects, if any, of selling the body parts of live people??
Posted by: Eliyahu at April 24, 2008 6:42 PM
Carla Del Ponte can hardly be described as pro-Serbian, so her charge about the Albanians in Kosovo must be taken seriously:
"Kosovo Albanian leaders have been implicated in the war-time trafficking of organs taken from hundreds of Serbs, according to a book by former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
The book entitled "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals" alleges those involved in the trafficking included leaders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which fought Serbian forces at the time in mid-1999.
Del Ponte wrote that around 300 prisoners, including women and other Slavs, were kidnapped and transported from Kosovo to Albania, where they were locked up and had their organs removed.
"These organs were then sent from Tirana airport to private clinics to be implanted in patients abroad who paid," she said in the book, available in Italy under the title "La Caccia: Io e i criminali di guerra." [Agence France-Presse, France24 (French counterpart of the BBC), 14 April 2008]"
at April 25, 2008 10:28 AM
The fundamental problem for native speakers of English with using terms like "jihad" and "jihadist" is that they aren't English words, with established definitions as to their meanings in English. They are words whose meanings vary depending upon not only the time and place they are used, but upon whom is speaking them and who the intended audience is.
Americans keep hearing these words, certainly since the 9/11 attacks, and have a general sense of what they think they mean, but the plain fact is that while they've become part of our vocabulary, their meaning is unclear. I don't mean to suggest that when an American says "jihad" he doesn't have a pretty clear idea in his mind of what the word means, but "jihad" is actually a word in another language, one which most Americans don't speak (I certainly don't), and a word which has connotations in Koranic theology to which I for one am not qualified to expound upon, and which muddifies (how that for using a word not found in any English dictionary, but one whose meaning for any American whose native language is English will be abundantly clear) rather than clarifies.
By way of example, recall when Pres. Bush used the word "crusade." A perfectly unobjectionable word in English, but when publicized and translated in the Arab-speaking world, all sorts of unintended ideological and historical baggage was attached to the use, which I can't believe for a moment was the presidents intent.
I've quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/04/re-fitzgerald-rice-in-over-her-head.html
at April 26, 2008 4:43 PM
The fundamental problem for native speakers of English with using terms like "jihad" and "jihadist" is that they aren't English words, with established definitions as to their meanings in English. They are words whose meanings vary depending upon not only the time and place they are used, but upon whom is speaking them and who the intended audience is.
Americans keep hearing these words, certainly since the 9/11 attacks, and have a general sense of what they think they mean, but the plain fact is that while they've become part of our vocabulary, their meaning is unclear. I don't mean to suggest that when an American says "jihad" he doesn't have a pretty clear idea in his mind of what the word means, but "jihad" is actually a word in another language, one which most Americans don't speak (I certainly don't), and a word which has connotations in Koranic theology to which I for one am not qualified to expound upon, and which muddifies (how that for using a word not found in any English dictionary, but one whose meaning for any American whose native language is English will be abundantly clear) rather than clarifies.
By way of example, recall when Pres. Bush used the word "crusade." A perfectly unobjectionable word in English, but when publicized and translated in the Arab-speaking world, all sorts of unintended ideological and historical baggage was attached to the use, which I can't believe for a moment was the presidents intent.
I've quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/04/re-fitzgerald-rice-in-over-her-head.html
at April 26, 2008 4:44 PM
Consul,
Good point about the unintended consequences of Bush's using "crusade." I have no doubt he used it in the positive sense that it is generally used in Western countries., without giving it a second thought (Bush isn't known for his deep knowledge of history, after all, and apparently his staff was equally clueless). This caused a problem, diplomatically speaking, and he never used it again. Presumably this was because the problem was thoroughly discussed in the State Department and it was decided that usage of this term created problems abroad that outweighed whatever approval he might have gotten from the Christian community here. My guess is that it was for these reasons that words like jihad were similarly banished from the diplomatic lexicon.
Posted by: Eastview at April 27, 2008 7:32 PM
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