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THE MEN WITHOUT NAMES. Matthew Yglesias, in the course of mercilessly mocking the RAND Corporation's suggestion that we market away our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan, reminds us just how foolish using the term "jihadist" is:
to a Muslim, something that's "jihad" is by definition a good thing, so when US officials refer to adversaries as "jihadists" we're implicitly accepting their definition of the conflict as one pitting Muslim holy warriors against enemies of the faith.So what do we call "them"? James Fallows suggested irhabists ("terrorists"), which has a rather dull ring to it. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carlin Romano prefers "savages, scum, and uncivilized losers." He criticizes British leaders for sounding "deadly serious about investigating the [car bomb attack] attempts, deadly uninterested in morally judging what happened."Questions of British understatement aside, Romano's suggestion is a good reminder about why Fallows's argument for "declaring victory" is such a good one. Romano writes:
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.How could you better deflate a terrorist's self-esteem than by refusing to hear out his moral message? By condemning the attack and refusing to allow the rants that went along with it to enter the public discussion? By intention or not, British officials have turned the Doctors' Plot into a non-event -- almost a joke -- that is very unlikely to appeal to the young.--Matt Sledge
