Posted by
Boris Tiraspolsky on Monday, April 19, 2010 2:36:25 AM
"..if we don’t call it what it is, first off we’re violating the first rule of war, know your enemy. Secondly, how do you defeat your enemy unless you describe it as what it is? And third, in many ways this is an ideological conflict between one set of values and this violent Islamist extremist ideology." - Senator Joe Lieberman
Senator Joe Lieberman
Comment by Senator Lieberman
by Boris Tiraspolsky
President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say. The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."
Senator Lieberman was asked about the Obama administration’s decision to remove the term “Islamic extremists” from the official U.S. National Security Strategy and use “violent extremists” instead.
“I don’t understand it. I think it’s fundamentally dishonest. I don’t think it gains us anything in the Muslim world. In fact, I think it probably loses us some support in the Muslim world.
We’re in a war not with some nebulous group of violent extremists. We’re not in a war with environmental extremists or white extremists. We’re in a war with violent Islamist extremists and terrorists. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were not just violent and extreme, they were motivated by an ideology of Islamist extremism which took the religion of Islam and essentially transformed it into a radical political ideology.
And if we don’t call it what it is, first off we’re violating the first rule of war, know your enemy. Secondly, how do you defeat your enemy unless you describe it as what it is? And third, in many ways this is an ideological conflict between one set of values and this violent Islamist extremist ideology. Most people in the Muslim world reject this ideology. But if we don’t say there’s a difference between most Muslims in the world and the violent Islamist extremists and terrorists, I think we’re disrespecting most of the Muslims.
Frankly, I think our enemies among the Islamist extremists must be laughing at this word game, and our friends in the Muslim world can’t be encouraged by it.”