Finally, the abominable circumlocution has been heaved out of the official US lexicon. Counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan gave the old "GWOT" the heave ho in a speech at Georgetown yesterday. The Geek applauds.
The Geek is not ready to give Brennan and the Obama administration kudos for abandoning the term "jihad" and its cognates. Tossing out "jihad" is an exercise in the absurd. It is also lacking in logic.
Brennan admits that our enemy, which he defines as al-Qaeda and akin groups, are seeking the establishment of a "global caliphate." Well, golly-gee, ain't that a religiously motivated goal? You know, Shariah and all that?
Then, gosh, what is wrong with "jihad?"
According to Brennan, the term means the internal struggle on the part of the believer to be an ever better Muslim. He is right. That is one of the word's denotative values. The lesser one.
The greater meaning is armed struggle against the infidels and apostates. It is an obligation on all good Muslims. It is the means by which "The House of Peace" (Islam) will defeat, conquer and occupy "The House of War" (everyone else.)
What is hard to understand about this? It is in the Sacred Writings of Islam as well as all the revered commentaries by Islamic scholars over the centuries. Heck, it is even what the jihadists say they are waging--jihad against the infidels and apostates.
Certainly as an old Mideast hand for the Agency, Mr Brennan is quite well aware of the word, its primary meaning, and its widespread currency. There is no need to attenuate the reality--particularly as Mr Brennan has correctly described the long-term goal of the Islamists including their armed component, the jihadists.
It is not, as Mr Brennan and others would pretend, a matter of elevating criminals to the dignity of religion. Not that at all. Rather it is a matter of correctly identifying the use of religiously rooted terms and concepts to justify criminal acts.
The religious coloration given to criminal acts by quoting Koranic verses, issuing fatwas, and insisting that jihad is incumbent on every true Muslim does not alter the basic nature of the act. Rather, acknowledging the use of concepts and terms from religion by terrorists and other criminals allows the proper parsing between observant Muslims and jihadists.
Getting beyond terms--important as these are in the definition of the enemy--and looking at motivations, Brennan seems to have adopted the socio-economic-political stance. He appears to have bought into the thesis that economic marginalisation, political marginalisation, and poor education are the root causes of Islamist terrorism.
While the poor, the disenfranchised, and ignorant are to be found in the ranks of Islamist jihadist groups including al-Qaeda, so also are the un-poor, the enfranchised, the educated. One need not be a former CIA officer nor a counter-terrorism specialist to know that the overwhelming majority of the leaders, the planners, even the executors of high profile attacks, have been drawn from the ranks of the economically well-founded, the educated, the upwardly mobile, even those who could have a most comfortable and well-integrated existence in their host society.
Even in the Gaza Strip an appreciable number of wannabe martyrs to say nothing of those who command and control them are not the flotsam of the refugee camps, the detritus of war. Even in that armpit of the human race, the chief jihadists, and most of the trigger pullers and suicide vest wearers are not poor, alienated, hopeless.
Social work, psychiatric intervention, economic uplift, educational outreach will not dent the population of actual or potential jihadists and the Islamists who direct their lives--and deaths. It beggars the imagination to believe that a man with the experience of Mr Brennan does not know this.
Islamists and jihadists alike are True Believers as Eric Hoffer defined the term. Their identity as individuals with worth and meaning is derived completely from their acceptance of and subscription to a particular interpretation of Islam. Some of the Islamists and jihadists are also nationalist True Believers. The combination of religious and nationalist True Belief cannot be addressed by mere economic or political reforms. Nor can it be countered by "public diplomacy" and education.
To the Islamist jihadist True Believer, other Muslims, even the most observant who do not share their world view of a global caliphate, Shariah for all, and the use of all means--fair or foul--to attain these goals, are suspect at best. The Islamist jihadist True Believer is more totalistic in his motivation than was even the most committed Nazi or Marxist-Leninist. Get a grip on that ground truth.
Mr Brennan has spent most of his adult life at the Agency. That sort of experience is noted for its breeding of a cynical but realistic view of people and their motivations. It is difficult to accept that Mr Brennan escaped this. Or that he really believes the pap about social work, economic development, and education as even a partial counter to the enemy before us.
However, Mr Brennan's boss, POTUS Obama is probably so naive as to believe that some ACORN style community organizing will end the jihadist (OOPS! Bad Geek! You should have written "violent extremist.") menace. And, as the hoary cliche has it: You have to go along to get along.
Sure, use the soft power tools to peel away the softest of the soft-core support for the Islamist jihadist agenda. That might work. But, for the hard core, the True Believers, there is but one sovereign remedy. They must be killed.
As the white eyes used to say about a chunk of the Geek's ancestors: "The only good Apache is a dead one." Every now and then as in the recent case of Baitullah Mehsud, we do manufacture a good Islamist jihadist.
The real deal is the need to make a whole lot more "good jihadists" not rename them.
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