A Lexicon has been...failed

Last week when talking of the attempted Times Square car bombing, President Obama said the following:

...They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life. But once again, an attempted attack has been—failed...

Awkward phrasing to say the least, but as the Weekly Standard says, "It is as if the president wanted to say the attack “has been thwarted” but then realized he could not. The attack failed because Shahzad did not do a better job of constructing his makeshift bomb. No government agency can take credit for that."

However the most interesting word in that quote from the President is 'they'. Who *is* 'they'??
If we depend upon the White House's official statements, we will never know. for as it turns out, the words words 'terrorism', 'jihad', 'Islam', and even 'enemy' are no longer welcome in the official lexicon of the Global War on Terror Overseas Contingency Operations.

There are two recent looks at this 'phenomenon'.

First from the aforementioned Weekly Standard "Don’t Mention the War", in which authors Stephen Hayes and Thomas Jocelyn ask:

"Why does the Obama administration find it so hard to utter the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘jihad’ and ‘Islamic extremism’?"

[...]

So, three attacks in six months, by attackers with connections to the global jihadist network—connections that administration officials have gone out of their way to diminish.

The most striking thing about all three attacks is not what we heard, but what we haven’t heard. There has been very little talk about the global war that the Obama administration sometimes acknowledges we are fighting and virtually nothing about what motivates our enemy: radical Islam.

This is no accident.

Near the end of their article they cite the incomparable Janet Napolitano, who said she doesn't use the word terrorism in order to avoid “the politics of fear.”

Great. We apparently want to avoid offending those who would instill us with terror (and death), by not engaging in “the politics of fear.” As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, the country is in the very best of hands.

In addition to the Weekly Standard, PJTV released an instructive look at how the lexicon has changed in the past several years.

In their video "Censorship of Islamic Terminology" from April 23d, you will see how along with 'terrorism' the offending terms 'jihad', 'Islam', and even 'enemy' are totally absent from important Obama Administration documents like the National Intelligence Strategy, FBI Counter-Terrorism Lexicon, and Lesson from Ft Hood report.



I wonder what words might be included in the report on the "Times Square Incident"? Recent evidence does not inspire confidence. I guess the real question should be...is this best categorized as cultural sensitivity, or appeasement?

At the very least, this should inspire a rise in billboard space rental....