Kevin Sullivan

The Terror Lexicon

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

The good folks over at Counterterrorism Blog (a daily requirement if you’re interested in the subject) have been tracking the State Department’s whitewashing of the word “Jihadist” from government communications, and are rightly perturbed.  Jeffrey Imm does a good job of breaking down the inanity in this move.  Some of the suggested adjustments make sense to me; but the labeling of all Islamic terrorists as “extremists” not only waters down the mission to prevent Islamic terrorism, it lumps the mere psychology of extremism into the realm of terror.  Doing this makes extreme thought and coordinated behavior (the latter being something closer to Jihadism) virtually the same thing. 

I’ve addressed this before, and it’s worth revisiting: What we’re seeing is a confusion between tactics and challenges.  If we intend to chase every band of “extremists” lurking in caves and spider holes around the world, we’ll get nowhere.  It would be like treating cancer with aspirin.  If you can’t even say who the enemy is, than how do you target the states and other actors that are bankrolling these people?

This is yet another departure from the Bush Doctrine, if such a thing every truly existed.