I had some similar thoughts, albeit a somewhat different approach on the "war"

War on Terror vs War on Islamist Terror

Athena,

I read your post, and while it contains some interesting points, I'm not sure I completely agree. These people are lunatics. They will attack us no matter what we call them. Anyone they can convince to join them is also a lunatic and the same applies. An islamist by any other name smells as foul. You seem to be working from a postmodern view that language creates reality. Frankly, I don't buy that. I don't even rent it. As a Literature PhD, I certainly wouldn't reject the importance of language, but to say that we can influence these nutballs by what we call them seems to me dubious at best.

If anything I'm not postmodern. Ugh, it makes my skin crawl.

I'm not saying language creates Islamists necessarily, but it does work to their advantage as they are the ones attempting to create a clash of civilizations.

A single word by the United States is not going to tip the scale and make a non-violent Muslim an Islamist or vice versa, but it will give moderates less room for speaking out against the more violent aspects of his/her religion.

Our preemption, while in my view the best strategy, will not be enough to combat the threat. We need moderates to not just acquiesce and sit quietly, but to take an active role.

It's hard to stand up and be counted when you are made out to be "against your people." That is what I fear the wording would help to do. It's already bad enough, why give them more long-term ammunition?

Athena,

Thanks for the clarification. I can see more wisdom now in your point. I'm still not sure we can convince or fail to convince moderate muslims to take action on the basis of naming our foe, but I don't suppose changing the terminology could hurt any. I certainly agree that their taking action would help enormously. I'm glad you're not a postmodernist. They's too many of them varmints around anyhow.

OT, Joe, I thought you would get a kick out of this.

"I wonder if there is any sort of reverse analogy with South Pacific "cargo cults". Instead of creating symbols in the hope of "magically" obtaining Western goods, [they use] the destruction of symbols to emphasise, and subconciously perhaps "magically" obtain, the rejection of Western contamination."

OK, this is nice, but …

First, it's not just Western. The twin Buddhas came before the Twin Towers of New York, parallel acts in sequence. It is the contamination of the infidel that must be eliminated, symbolically and physically, not Western infidels only.

Also, I object to any heavy emphasis on "magical thinking". Not to the idea that there's a lot of magic in the thinking of our enemies: the way the Buddhas were destroyed makes it clear that these acts were intended to be effective on a supernatural level (purification, invoking the goodwill of Allah). But to emphasise the enemy as acting irrationally, implicitly in contrast to us rational ones, that is the problem.

First, they have a good program that harmonises their mystical and practical agendas. Humiliation and destruction of key enemy symbols is a key part of religious/cultural war to the death. If the few and the bold are to wreck and subjugate substantial cultures, this is really how it is done. Example: destruction of the key symbols of the Aztecs and Incas was not a magical act by the European invaders, separate from or instead of the real, rational fight against the Aztecs and the Incas. It had a supernatural element in terms of the Christian definition of the native polytheist religions as devil-worship, but it was also vital to the conquest and destruction of the target cultures on every level. There is no dividing line, no story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru that can be told without the elements of religious dread, bluffery, sacred kingship and betrayal and so on.

Second, we have lots of magical thinking ourselves. So an us/them division based on an emphasis of the irrationality of the other religion/culture doesn't cut it in my opinion. We are not a culture of Mister Spocks, and we'd better not think we can do the sorts of things that Vulcans could do if they were fighting this war.

We can't just pick labels that are accurate, we have to gee up the right emotions and damp down the wrong ones, constantly. That's not political pandering or reprehensible "spin", that's war as it has to be fought by people like us.

On the topic of "War against Terror" versus "War against Islamist Terror" I agree with Athena that "War on Terror" is fine and that "War on Islamist Terror" would be a bad mistake, but whereas she's concerned with the effect on Muslims and their hair-trigger hostility, I agree but I'm concerned with the effects on us and our own magical thinking. It doesn't matter which rationale one prefers though, as long as one gets the label right.

Spot on, David Blue. And it's absolutely consistent with Salafist teaching that the World Trade Center, Wall Street, and the Pentagon are objects of our idolatry as surely as the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan were historically objects of idolatry there.

David Blue: Excellent points-- but you know my organic bias-- I remember watching a special about the "Arab Street" on the Discovery channel post 911. The commentator said (about the hijackers) "...those young men felt like dwarves, and they went looking for the tallest building they could find, to pull it down." I argue that given the endemic testasterone poisoning of the ME, the Twin Towers were, at some level, phallic symbols. :)

David Blue - this seems about right in terms of magickal/religious intent. That is one reason why I fully expect the world population of Moslems 20 years from now to be about 1/10th what it is now. Ultimately, the Mongol solution is the only one which will work. Oddly, I think a religious person like Bush might be less likely to destroy Islam than a secularist president. But that bridge will not be crossed for at least 10 years IMO.

Joe: I guess I think both 'War on Terror' and 'War on Islamic Terror' are quite inferior to Harris' model--

"So perhaps it is time to retire the war metaphor and to deploy one that is more fitting: the struggle to eradicate disease. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century, after all, spread like a virus in susceptible populations: Their propagation was not that suggested by John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas — fantasy ideologies were not debated and examined, weighed and measured, evaluated and compared. They grew and spread like a cancer in the body politic. For the people who accepted them did not accept them as tentative or provisional. They were unalterable and absolute. And finally, after driving out all other competing ideas and ideologies, they literally turned their host organism into the instrument of their own poisonous and deadly will."

That makes perfect sense to me. The memesets are propagated very like virii using the replicator algorithm. The organic model is always the most robust.

Jinderalla,

Did Harris really say that? I don't remember being so unimpressed with his article when I read it, but good grief--it wasn't the WHO that won the Cold War.

I also liked John Farren's comment very much--
"I wonder if there is any sort of reverse analogy with South Pacific "cargo cults". Instead of creating symbols in the hope of "magically" obtaining Western goods, [they use] the destruction of symbols to emphasise, and subconciously perhaps "magically" obtain, the rejection of Western contamination."

Yes, I think. When I was in highschool I did a report on the Six Days War for World History. I guess I was pretty sheltered (read white-bread), and I could not figure out what the point was. My dad, in his cryptic fashion, told me the war started because, "...the Israelis had flush toilets and the Arabs didn't.." My initial teenager thought was that the Arabs desired flush plumbing, and were fighting to get it! No, they do not want our satanic western plumbing, hospitals, schools, thriving economics, or public sewer and water systems. Except perhaps "magickally". :)

Kirk Parker: Yah, I snipped it from the end--

"it wasn't the WHO that won the Cold War."

World Health Organization? But the Cold War was a different paradigm entirely!! :-)

"Did Harris really say that? I don't remember being so unimpressed with his article when I read it, but good grief..."

I liked it very much. Harris is speaking my language. :)

Are you teasing me? I have five brothers, mister, and I can take anything you can dish out!!

I disagree with Outside the Beltway, only because those six goals are the primary goals of al-Qaeda. Given the invitations to France to convert to Islam, or the al-Qaeda involvement in the Bosnian and Kosovar wars, etc, they seem to want to expand the dar al-Islam. If they achieved their six goals, it would be an interlude before open warfare between the Caliphate and The Rest.

I haven't read Imperial Hubris, so it might say just that.