Israel Matzav

More Orwellian language from Obama

This is not a parody. Mona Charen reports that in the interests of political correctness, the Obama administration will no longer refer to Iran and North Korea as 'rogue states.'

In the latest installment of politically correct, not to say Orwellian, language emanating from the Obama administration, the term "rogue states" has been sidelined in favor of "outliers." The switch was unveiled as part of the just released Nuclear Posture Review. States like North Korea and Iran, labeled "rogue" by the Bush administration, will no longer labor under that punitive adjective.

This is all part of a pattern:

Outlier has no negative connotations at all. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "One whose domicile is distant from his or her place of business." The Macintosh computer dictionary adds a secondary connotation of exclusion from a group. So to employ the label "outliers" for nations that are, by any civilized measure, criminal is pusillanimous. No doubt the leadership in Iran has also noticed that an administration that softens its words has also modified its proposed sanctions. Whereas once Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of "crippling" sanctions, she has now climbed down to "sanctions that bite." Can annoying sanctions be far behind?

The administration does not like to use hurtful words to our enemies. Our friends are another matter. Compare the treatment Great Britain, Honduras, and Israel have received with the walking on eggshells approach to our foes. Early on, the administration jettisoned the term "Global War on Terror" in favor of a catch phrase only a bureaucrat could have coined -- "overseas contingency operations." The word "terrorism" was similarly airbrushed from official language. Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano prefers the term "man-caused disasters" because "it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear ..." A more anodyne term has now surfaced from a number of officials -- "countering violent extremism."

The detainees in Guantanamo, too, have had a name change. They will no longer be called "enemy combatants." The new name hasn't been chosen yet, though cynics might just use "former clients of Obama Justice Department lawyers."

While they were reclassifying Iran and North Korea, the Obama administration, with spine of purest Jell-O, let it be known that the revised National Security Strategy will eschew references to "Islamic extremism," "jihad," "Islamic radicalism" and other such terms. "Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?" asked National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy, who runs the Obama administration's Global Engagement Directorate. It's apparently acceptable to use the term "fights terrorism" when you're retreating from it. (Speaking of language, this is not the first administration to appoint "czars," but it may be the first to create "directorates." Doesn't anyone at the White House get a chill down his spine at the word, which is part of the title of the GRU, the KGB's sister agency? Guess not.)

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:06 AM