Fire-Keepers

In a Spiegel Online interview Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was asked about her apparent refusal to say the word ‘terrorism’: [Source]

Spiegel: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word "terrorism." Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Man-caused disaster? Nuance? Risk management? What the hell? Has the English language become Orwell’s 1984 ‘Newspeak? A man-caused disaster can be as mundane as leaving the toilet seat up, as personally disastrous as losing your paycheck to a mugger or as socially devastating as arson related forest fires and bridge collapses. While the least of those are merely annoying and the worst of those are truly horrific they are viewed with some degree of actual relevance and an understanding that the results are immediately manageable; that we are capable, equipped and willing to manage them.

But to call TERRORISM — the willful murder of innocents, the irradicable intolerance, the purposeful and deliberate propagation of wide-spread fear– a MAN-CAUSED DISASTER? That, my friend, is not simply playing with language. It is a deliberate attempt to alter public mindset about the current President’s abilities… a *deception* seeking to create blind faith in some predetermined success and generate a undeserved sense of accomplishment. That is both foolish and dangerous. To attempt to spread a (false) sense of security with slick wordsmithing is meant to undermine American and Americans, to silence dissent and to lull us into acquiescence… it steals our consent and our involvement in the larger picture.

Obama, Napolitano et al can play with words all they want of course, and most likely will, but to continue calling terrorism anything other than what it is is to willfully seek a true American disaster. I am *not* advocating mindless, useless reaction or self-destructive hate and fear-mongering but rather conscious mindful honesty and truly transparent discussions that take into account the TRUE nature of terrorism in the world today.

What about you? Will *you* give up and give in? Are *you* ready to slip quietly into their offered illusion that all is well… that there is no such thing as willful deadly terrorism… that mindless hate and intolerance is only an occasional inconvenient hazard?

Are you willing to listen only to what they want you to hear? Will you consent, by your silence, to the redefining of ‘the war on terrorism’ to simply a ‘matter of risk management’?

Words are NOT just words. I don’t know about you but I refuse to accept that if ‘they’ can only nuance the words *just right* the terrorists –the radical murderers and haters around the world– will simply give up and fall in line, learning love and tolerance along the way.

By all means. Diplomacy first and foremost.  But we can never give in to fear *or* naivete in the belief that enemies will forgo their own convictions.

Tags: Homeland Security, Napolitano, Newspeak, Obama, Terrorism

This entry was posted by admin on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am and is filed under Opinion, Politics, Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.