What Is In A Name?
The BBC notes that the Pentagon gears up for new media war:
The Pentagon’s new effort to influence media coverage of the war in Iraq is an example of how governments react when a war is not going too well.
They begin to think it is not the war that is the problem, but the presentation of it.
The media, being the messengers, get the blame, not the message itself.
While probably not the most egregious error the Shrubbery and Company make, yesterday NPR had a nice piece on one of the “media problems”:The War on the Word ‘Jihad’.
How long would an America news organization get away with referring to suicide bombers as Islamic martyrs? The Blight would melt keyboards to be the first to call that organization traitors. So why does the US government call those killing US troops “holy Islamic warriors”, jihadists?
If the US government would replace jihad, the claim of the extremists, with, herabah, a declaration of war against G-d and His Messenger, the moderates might have an opening. As long as the US is claiming to fight a jihad, the moderates have no place to stand.
It would also help if someone would inform the American military in Iraq that a hajji, is a pilgrim, and a word with religious significance in the Islamic world. Hearts and minds, people. There are plenty of good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon terms for the enemy, which don’t automatically create new enemies.
If we actually had someone in a position of influence who understood Islamic culture, we might have avoided a lot of problems that have managed to make a horribly bad situation even worse.
