If We Don't Call Them Names, the Terrorists Win
By CARLIN ROMANO
After the terrorist near misses in London and Glasgow, British officials did the expected. They raised their nation's threat-assessment level. They weighed the balance between civil liberties and new, tougher security measures. They pondered the latest fold in the elaborate tapestry before them, the possibility of a privileged jihadist cell tucked into the country's National Health Service.
Finally, they produced the usual morally namby-pamby, logistics-heavy rhetoric about getting to the bottom of each case. They sounded deadly serious about investigating the attempts, deadly uninterested in morally judging what happened.
"We are on the trail," a senior Whitehall official immediately told The Sunday Times of London, and so, as subsequent arrests indicated, they were. London Mayor Ken Livingstone urged city residents to remain vigilant. Lord Carlile of Berriew, a top British terrorism official, upped the ante by admonishing Londoners to be "forever vigilant." New Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared, "We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life."
Brown obviously hadn't tried as mere citizen to connect internationally through Heathrow lately, a feat that requires the very un-British task of squeezing all carry-on items allowed elsewhere into one bag (really, one bag) or losing them to Heathrow security officers, who must be scoring quite a take on duty-free purchases.
A similar rhetorical fiasco took place after the conclusion of the 114-day kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. No government ministers denounced the successful Gaza kidnappers, who reportedly won release of some gunmen in the deal, as bastards, lowlife, cowards, scum. Official rhetoric after terrorist acts has become ethically neutral, merely strategic in tone and content.
You might think shrewd politicians would notice something wrong with this picture. After all, the last major national politician to insult those who violate civilized norms in expressing political anger — former French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who denounced Muslim rioters in France as "scum" for their car burnings and mayhem — won election as president of France despite predictions that he'd committed political suicide.
Yet the vast majority of statesmen believe in purely operational talk after terrorist acts. On July 4, Franco Frattini, the EU's top justice official, announced a wide array of new antiterrorist measures, including an EU-wide passenger-data-recording system, and criminalization of bomb-making instructions on the Internet. "We will find a better way to discourage and detect terrorists," Frattini said.
W hy does such a better way not include a call for sterner moral judgment, forcefully expressed?
Should Ayman al-Zawahri, deputy head of Al Qaeda, be the only "leader" quoted making moral judgments — that Arab regimes are "corrupt" — in a week of terrorist incidents? Why do media parrot this moral irresponsibility, as in The Boston Globe's post-Glasgow editorial that the terrorist threat can "be countered by means of sound intelligence, conventional police work, legal adaptations that do not create a law-free zone, and leadership that distinguishes law-abiding communities from the crazed Islamist ideologues that prey upon them"?
The reasons fall into five categories.
The first rationale amounts to political correctness, however odd that may ring in regard to terrorism, the most political of all matters on the government's plate. It's the reflexive unwillingness of officials to express moral and political beliefs for fear they'll insult and offend others. Remember Fowler's classic definition of euphemism: "mild or vague or periphrastic expression as a substitute for blunt precision or disagreeable truth."
These days officials win praise for such evasion. In London, Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil-rights group Liberty, observed of Gordon Brown that he "has passed the first test of his administration. He has not played politics with the terror threat and has treated this weekend's events as an operational rather than a political matter."
But if the admirable part of political correctness is that one shouldn't utter unsupportable, reactionary ethnic, gender, or other generalizations, that principle is misapplied in the case of terrorists, who are picked out for condemnation by their acts alone. Aren't "bastards," "scum," and so on precisely the right terms for people who seek to maim and kill presumably innocent others to make a political point?
A second reason for muted language is the notion that not using emotional, judgmental words means one is acting more rationally and efficiently. Here, too, current clichés of proper official behavior encourage word-mincing. New Home Secretary Jacqui Smith won applause for the "calmness and dignity" of her remarks to Parliament after the failed car bombings.
That backslap makes little sense in regard to commentary on terrorists. Are all morally judgmental words "emotive"? Few would think that calling terrorists "wrong" or "immoral" counts as emotive, though branding them "evil" might slip into that category nowadays, on the ground that President Bush gave "evil" a bad name. The step to "cowardly" or "barbarian" strikes far more people as worrisome verbal escalation. What, though, is the logical inference between emotionally strong language by responsible people and irrational action? We don't expect President Bush to make weepy, emotionally upset decisions because he emerges teary-eyed from meetings with American families who've lost loved ones in Iraq. We don't expect religious figures or ordinary people who deliver strong, moving remarks at funerals to make irrational decisions immediately afterward. Why infer such things with politicians?
A third reason, construable as a corollary of the second, is that citizens don't want to see their leaders act emotionally. Hitler's histrionics and Khrushchev's shoe-pounding remain quintessential Bigfoot examples of the political equation that emotional language signals demagoguery. On a different scale, famous moments in American political history, such as Sen. Edward Muskie's alleged crying over attacks on his wife, reinforced a perceived equation between emotion and weakness.
Here one would like to see a poll. Politicians might be surprised by the result.
A fourth reason for morally neutral language about terrorism is fear that emotional, insulting language might make terrorists angrier and more dangerous. An old anecdote about former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir figures on the other side. Once, at an Israeli cabinet meeting, someone reportedly warned that the action contemplated would anger the Palestinians. Shamir supposedly replied, "Are they going to hate us more?" — implying that enemies of Israel had already hit their max in that department, freeing Israel from such consequentialist calculations. A similar logic appears more applicable to terrorists than fear of inciting them to greater ferocity. That aside, fear that insulting or strongly judging terrorists will cause greater terrorism appears to contradict the logic behind emotionless security talk itself — that violence is prevented by tough tactical measures rather than rhetoric. So long as rigorous tactics remain in place during rhetorical upgradings, things should not get worse.
Finally, there is the reason, intuited even by nonexperts on rhetoric, that repeating such language weakens its power. Listening to President Bush denounce terrorists every day as cowards would grow old fast, this thinking goes, as did hearing the mantra that "terrorists hate our freedom." Here, one might nonetheless ask, for what would we be trying to hold language's power in reserve? For another 9/11? A dirty bomb exploded in an American city? Is anything short of slaughtering thousands at a time insufficient for moral outrage? Nonuse of morally strong language arguably saps it of power more than repeated use, making it seem quaint and archaic.
All key reasons for avoiding stern moral judgments and insults toward terrorists, then, prove less than compelling. What might we argue in favor of calling terrorists names?
Let's mention just one key goal: the education of the world's Muslim youth. Instead of hearing moral praise and encouragement for terrorism from jihadists, which then gets mixed in their minds with the nonjudgmental, tactical talk of Western officials and media, they'd have to absorb a steady stream of insults of terrorists' intelligence, morality, decency, and reasoning. Young Muslims would have to get used to hearing jihadist heroes described as savages, scum, and uncivilized losers, along with the reasons why. It would intellectually force them, far more than they are forced today, to choose between two visions of the world.
We should not minimize the thirst for respect among terrorists and their potential sympathizers. When we treat terrorists only as tactical foes, as though we're too jaded for moral talk, we raise the self-respect of terrorists and their appeal to young people. Christopher Hitchens's surprise best seller, God Is Not Great, employs wry understatement in its title, then sarcastically drills home why "not being great" is the least of God's problems and sins. Perhaps officials around the free world, under a portfolio titled "Terrorism Is Not Great," could start stockpiling verbal weapons that penetrate the enemy more sharply than, "They're dangerous and we must fight them."
Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle and literary critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.
Spleen sez:
It is morally repugnant and against the WORD of GOD to accept evil on any level.
Carlin does not realize this, but it is the Wests' GODLESSNESS that has allowed this
mealy mouthed dhimmi pathetoric to be our politicians "diplomatic normal"
REBELLION TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD
~ The original proposal for the seal of the United States ....
Around a picture of Moses parting the sea.
PSALM 74
Israel Matzav: Why we should make moral judgments about terrorism
The stones of archaeology were silent witnesses to the dramas of the past, and it was only after 1799, when the Rosetta Stone was discovered, that the ancient records could be deciphered. It took Jean Francois Champollion twenty years to decipher the ancient hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was unique in that three languages were inscribed upon it, telling the same story. The languages were Demotic Egyptian, Greek, and Hieroglyphics. 
The science of archaeology is thus a fledgling science, and most of its treasures have only been subject to scrutiny in the last century. Today it is possible to not only read hieroglyphics, but also the ancient cuneiform writings. Astoundingly, the ancient relics have succeeded in silencing many of the Biblical critics. The harmony between Scripture and archaeological findings has shed new light upon these ancient records.
who ruled from 1532 to 1508 BC. Tutmoses I was the third pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, the first being Amoses (the moon is born) 1570 to 1553 BC, followed by Amenhotep (Ammun is pleased) 1553 to 1532 BC, who was the father of Tutmoses I. This is the pharaoh who issued the decree that all the sons born to the Israelites were to be thrown into the river, but that girls were permitted to live. (Exodus 1:22) Aaron, the brother of Moses was born in 1533 BC prior to the reign of Tutmoses I, and he had thus escaped the vicious decree. According to Biblical chronology, Moses fled Egypt forty years after his birth in 1490 BC (Remember, we have to calculate backwards, as we are dealing with the time before Christ). Exodus 2:15 tells us about pharaoh's reaction:
It was here in Midian of Sinai that the Lord revealed Himself to Moses. Two pharaohs reigned simultaneously during the exile of Moses. Tutmoses I, who issued the decree to kill the new-born sons of the Israelites, was the father of Hatshepsut, the princess who is the most likely candidate for having found Moses in the Nile. It is probable that Moses grew up as a foster child in the house of pharaoh. Tutmoses I had no sons, and upon his death, in 1508 BC, Moses could have become pharaoh, but he declined. Acts 7:20 tells us:
but again he refused. Hatshepsut herself became the next pharaoh. Her mortuary temple is at Deir el Bahri, and she ruled Egypt from 1504 to 1482 BC - a total of 22 years. Hatshepsut was not the only pharaoh to be enthroned at that time, but the illegitimate son of her husband became co-regent together with her. He was Tutmoses III, who was favoured by the Egyptian priesthood. 
Moses heard about the death of Hatshepsut while he was in exile, and her death is recorded in his writings. In Exodus 2:23, it states: "During that long period, the king of Egypt died...". The sole ruler in Egypt was now Tutmoses III, and with Hatshepsut out of the way, and the protection she probably afforded the Israelites no longer available, Tutmoses suppressed them in the most cruel fashion.
(after the death of Hatshepsut), and Amenhotep II was not in Egypt at the time of the exodus, but in Syro-Palestine with the bulk of the Egyptian army suppressing an uprising. According to Egyptian writings, he returned in June 1450 BC, when he apparently defaced many Egyptian monuments. This act needs an explanation. The Bible tells us that all the first-born in Egypt died in the last plague. On returning to Egypt, he would have found not only the Israelites gone, but he would have also found his father dead, and his first-born son killed in the plague. One can now understand the emotion felt by Amenhotep that caused such a violent outburst.
inscription on the Stela between the legs of the Sphinx, which tells the story of how the second-born son became pharaoh in the place of the first-born. Apparently, Tutmoses IV was resting between the legs of the Sphinx when he heard a voice telling him to clear the sand from between the legs, and the Sphinx would see to it that he, rather than the first-born, would be pharaoh. An unlikely story, and another demonstration of attempts to cloud the issue, so that the embarrassment should not be made public to the descendants.
symbolizing the change from Amun worship to Aten worship. ("Amenhotep" means "Amun is pleased"). Further evidence of Akhenaten's break with the old religion, is that he shifted his capital from Luxor to a new capital Akhetaten. In a song written by Akhenaten to his god, there are seventeen verses which correspond with Psalm 104.
bonding relationship with the pharaoh. His wife was the famous Nefertiti which means 'maiden of joy'. They had six daughters of which one was engaged to a young man by the name of Tutankaten. The daughter's name was Ankensenpaaten. Note that the names end in 'aten', portraying their mode of worship. Upon the death of Akhenaten, Tutankaten was to become the next pharaoh. However, his change of name to Tutankamun indicates that his pharaohship was subject to the change of his religion. The greatest archaeological finds concern this pharaoh, and tell the story of a splendid reign of short duration. The question one might ask is whether it was worth giving up the truth for the sake of earthly glory. The defacing of the statues associated with the reign of Akhenaten again demonstrates the hatred and rivalry between idolatry and the worship of the Creator God.
