Tony the Riveter

"As with the Marines, Baby's and Aslan's focus 'isn't on their weapons and tactics, but on leadership,'" we captioned this "There will always be an England" animated giff published on our birthday, December 15, last year. Go here to vote for sisu in the "Best of the Top 250 Blogs" in Wizbang's Weblogs Awards 2006.

"Britain stops talk of 'war on terror,'" headlines a Guardian article, apparently pleased as punch that the Foreign Office can no longer stomach the calling of a spade a spade:

Many senior British politicians and counter-terrorism specialists have always been uneasy with the term 'the war on terror', coined by Bushitler the White House in the week following the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the term risked inflaming hot-headed Islamofascists opinions worldwide. Other critics said that it was too 'military' and did not adequately describe the nature of the diverse efforts made to counter the new threat.

A bit of a letdown in the wake of Tony Blair's riveting "The duty to integrate" speech yesterday -- dubbed by our sis "the most thrilling speech I've heard since Winston Churchill." 'Course WW II was history by the time she was born, but you get the point. Fortunately, not all British government figures are taking orders from the Foreign Office's Orwellian "Engaging with the Islamic World Unit":

Writing in the Sun recently, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, referred to 'our police and armed forces in the front line of the war on terror'.

A few savory tidbits from the Telegraph's glorious reportage of Blair's speech yesterday [via TigerHawk]:

Mr Blair's volte face -- just eight years ago he was a multiculturalist champion - was the culmination of a long Labour retreat from a cause it once enthusiastically embraced. In recent weeks, Jack Straw, Ruth Kelly, John Reid and Gordon Brown have all played their part in a concerted revision of the Cabinet's stand which began in earnest after the July 7 bombs in London last year.

Mr Reid, in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday on GMTV, said he was "sick and tired" of the sort of the "mad political correctness" that led to Christmas being devalued. "I think most people just find this completely over the top and I would rather have a bit of what I call PCS -- Plain Common Sense -- than PC -- Political Correctness," the Home Secretary added.

"Plain Common Sense" is music to our ears, of course, and as we've blogged early and often, words matter. Michelle Malkin cites Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Year" winner, the toe-curling "truthiness." The American Dialect Society's definition evokes visions of Dan Rather, Jimmy Carter and pretty much every Utopianist that ever came down the pike:

Truthiness (noun)

1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)

2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)

Michelle is soliciting "your favorite word of the year . . . Send along other nominations, and I'll put up a poll later today." Again, words matter. As we blogged last year:

"War on Terror" engages the imagination and rolls off the tongue, but who could ever remember the colorless "Struggle Against Violent Extremism"? [Although its acronym, SAVE, has a certain je ne sais quoi about it] It sounds like something a U.N. committee would come up with after months of study.

Or maybe something a group of elder statesmen like the Iraq Study Group would come up with after months of study? If we can have "wars" on all manner of diseases -- from Aids to cancer -- not to mention wars on drugs and poster children of other human failings, why can't we have a war on the behavior of the good folks who want to bury us? We're sticking with the words of wisdom of Miss Wood, our 10th-grade high school English teacher: "Muddy words reflect muddy thinking."

Update: Lots of purrs from Mini of House of the (Mostly) Black Cats, who "gets a treat for each bloggy that signs up to celebrate" Carnival of the Cats #142, dedicated to the memory of Laurence Simon's beloved Piper.

Comments

[goomp]

As they say, tell it like it is not how we wish it were

[Laura Lee Donoho]

I remember my junior English teacher, Mrs. Grigsby and how fascinating she made the subject of English Lit.

She was a former FBI agent and although she had to be in her late sixties, Mrs. Grigsby impressed me as a very cerebral, well-read, and refined person.

We knew of her past career as an FBI agent but she never spoke of it.

I learned more from her in that one year than in all the years of English. She introduced me to Jane Austen and for that I will always be grateful.

[enrevanche]

Wars on abstract concepts don't tend to work out well. The War on Poverty, for example, has hardly been a smashing success. Wars on loosely defined categories (e.g. "Drugs") have not fared any better.

Calling something a "war on terror" is making a fundamental category error.

If we want to tell it like it truly is, let's stop pretending that we're at "war" with "terror," or even "terrorism," or even "terrorists."

We are engaged in a civilizational conflict, and it is Islamic Religious and Political Radicalism vs The Entire Rest of the Civilized and Uncivilized World.

Activities that we would ordinarily think of as "war" (shooting, bombing, etc.) are and will continue to be a part of that, but we're gravely in danger of missing the big picture if we think of this as a "war."

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a true giant in foreign policy, passed away this week; she made a trenchant observation once that should be chiseled in stone outside the Pentagon and the State Department, among other locations:

"Just as war is politics by other means, so diplomacy may be war by other means."

That applies to our side as well as theirs.

[hnav]

too 'military' ?

this is the British ?

mmm...

the world has turned upside down and inside out.

the liberal pc thing, doesn't enjoy reality, or the truth...

maybe this is why they like Bill and Hillary?

how about the simple...
'FIGHT FOR FREEDOM'!

Global War for Liberty?

* or maybe something the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS might appreciate...
'RAISING GLOBAL AWARENESS TO APPEASE TERRORISTS, BY ENCOURAGING THEIR ETERNAL SLEEP, HELPING THE OPPRESSED RELIGION OF PEACE LEARN THE BENEFITS OF SURRENDER'