What description would make the president happy when you and I discuss the threat of Islamist jihadis?

I have no problem with using the word “Islamist” to mean exactly what it means. But invariably, when I use it in a public forum, I am questioned about it, because people don’t know that it means something different from “Muslim”. At most, I am speaking to a dozen people at a time in one of these discussions. The president is speaking to millions. Perhaps he thinks it is counterproductive to use terms which, as we all know, are not well understood. This becomes even more important when his audience is filled with people who have very strong feelings (on all sides) about the subject matter.

That’s my guess. But since I can’t see inside his head, I don’t know what would actually “make him happy”. I’m not sure I even think any terminology would “make him happy”. That’s a weird choice of words.

Certainly, what makes your president “happy” has no bearing on whether I use the word “Islamist”. I imagine it would be even less likely to influence whether you use it. Why care what he feels?

I think unhappy Muslim wearers of black shrouds who carry sharp knives and AK 47’s who will want to kill you the moment you are a free and happy non believe of Islam. Pretty catchy.

Silly gamesmanship. It doesn’t really matter what the president decides to call the murderous tribes. Whatever euphemism he uses, we all know precisely who he is talking about.

Remember that the administration (ANY administration, not just Obama) has a balancing act—whether an adminiistration likes it or not, they still have to look at the broader picture of foreign policy, both short and long term.

So arguing whether he should use this word or not, that’s a very tangential, populistic, and silly argument. People should be worried about the big picture, long term relations, and the future—not some petty little argument that is basically a naggy whine.

The biggest threat we face from terrorists is that we will destroy who we are and what we believe as a nation, that we will compromise our constitution in order to catch/kill a small number of assholes. Climate change, increases in inequality between the middle class and the top 1%, fox news and the fear mongering, complete abandonment of journalistic integrity/responsibility, are all much more serious threats to this country.

I’m more likely to die from a lightning strike than a terrorist. I don’t let that fear rule my life, and in doing so, I don’t let terrorists get what they want: a reaction. So fuck the terrorists, let the CIA and collations of locals figure out how to take them down, but let’s not give them more attention than they deserve and play their game.

As for what word should we use, let’s just call them scum and move on.

Nice rah rah speech @gorillapaws….calling them scum and moving on will do nothing more than making them chuckle as they behead another westerner. The refusal to acknowledge that we have a rapidly growing threat to what we hold near and dear is denial at it’s worst. We have to make a gut check are accept that we need to fight fire with fire and before it is too late.

If you have ever played the game Risk you know all too well what it means to loose and ally country and then lose the game…and the fact the Yemen was recently compromised, all that is left is Saudi Arabia and if you have been paying attention….the Saudis are who have been providing arms and funding to many of these factions who want our heads on a stick. It is a FUBAR mess over there and suggesting we do not pay more attention is EXACTLY what they want us to do.

@Cruiser What if they behead another westerner? Yeah, it’s shitty and wrong, but do your really think it’s worth bankrupting our country, betraying our values, and principles to try to get every last person that hates us? I don’t think it’s worth that cost. What about gun control? that would save a hell-of-a-lot more “westerner” lives than prolonged ground wars in the middle east. What about demilitarizing the police to reduce killings of “westerners?”

You want to end terrorism? How about a $15/gallon tax on oil? Use that money to fund a total swap to electric cars through subsidies and infrastructure buildout. Be a patriot! drive electric! Contrast this with the Republican redneck in the biggest SUV he can afford that donates money to terrorists every time he fills up (which is often)... but he’s the fucking patriot right?

You can’t defeat terrorism with force. The entire premise is fucking ridiculous. It’s an ideology, not a game of risk. You can’t shoot an idea. You defeat ideology with diplomacy and education, and by improving the welfare of the people in those regions. Happy dudes, with successful careers and bright futures don’t blow themselves up on airplanes, it’s destitute people, who are vulnerable to manipulative recruiters that are the ones who can be brainwashed into committing suicide in an act of mass-murder.

@gorillapaws Again you are exposing yourself to be a slave of the MSNBC Liberal talking points that have zero basis in reality to solve the problems we face. You are smarter than this. The one point you and I agree on is we truly can’t defeat terrorism with force….(well we can bomb them out of existence but where will that put us?)

The real problem we face is that as long as there are disenfranchised poor uneducated Muslim young men and women who’s parents, aunts and uncles were killed or maimed….they will be easily swept up by radicals who will promise salvation and or death in the name of Allah if they sign up to revenge these Western atrocities.

If we cannot effect a better way of life that these poor pissed off Muslim youth can feel good about living where the are living and want to contribute to their community rather than cut off heads, than I say we pack up…get the hell out of the Middle East…..stop giving them arms, money and buying their oil and let them sort it out on their own. But since I am not Halliburton, Unocal or Exxon, I feel I have little say in the matter.

I must say, this forum really seemed vacant without TC’s shit-posting.

You could call them right wing, conservative, devoutly religious patriots.
What you do not realise is, you and the Islamists are the same.
They think it is fine to blow themselves up in a group of innocent people.
You think it is ok to murder innocent civilians with drone strikes and jarheads and to torture innocent people in secret prisons.
The more innocent people you murder with your drone strikes and your brainless jarheads, the more terrorists will be born.
And the more terrorism happens because of that, the more you will want to exterminate ”‘dem filthy sandniggers” (a term that is very popular among far right lunatics on the internet)
You are two sides of the same coin.
You keep feeding off of each other.
You need each other. Like the Joker and Batman.
The punchline being of course, you are both Jokers.

ISIL isn’t any more of a threat to the west than any other extremist group. Don’t let the pro-Israel propaganda that floods most western news fool you into thinking there is actual danger in the west.

Jolly rotten fellows?

GA, ragingloli!

@cruiser
Why do you pretend that we have been weak on terrorism? We have been bombing 8 countries for the past 13 years and it seems that the threat of “terrorism” has only grown, along with terror networks.
Why do you overlook the fact, that bombing 8 countries, just may cause people to fight back and strengthen their ability to find “extremists?”

Picture yourself as a 10 year old kid back in 2001 and all of a sudden, your country, and other Muslim countries are being continuously bombed. Imagine your friends and family have been blown up in drone strikes while attending a wedding. You live in constant fear if remote control planes flying overhead, dropping bmobs from thousands of miles away.
What cause would you fight for after seeing that for so many years, and you are now old enough to fight back?

No country has invaded and occupied nearly as many countries as the U.S. has seen it was created. We are the biggest hypocrites in the world.
We say it is bad to kill people, but we kill people.
We say it is bad to hack governments, we hack governments and spy on our own people.
We say it is bad to torture, we torture.
We say it is bad to manipulate currency, while our entire economy is based on a maipulated currency.

our government is and has been the greatest threat to our freedom and liberty, not an extremist group that we have been helping support for a long time, and probably even helped create.

@SquirrelEStuff I am not pretending we are weak on terrorism, it is fact. Look what happened when our pacifist President removed our last troops from Iraq…..all hell broke loose. We sit back and watch these scumbags cut the heads off of our people and not do a damn thing about it. When we were in Iraq doing the job on the ground we set out to do….there was a semblance of stability and normalcy in that region. Now that we packed up and left we are seen as indecisive and unreliable and now using drone attacks is seen as nothing less that cowardly and incoherent as far as a military strategy or reliable ally.

And to add insult to injury, Obama still wants to let the worst of the worst offenders in Guantanamo go free. Are you kidding me??

Lol. Iraq hasn’t been stable since we removed Hussein. As my friend who’s spent much of the past decade or so there told me: “we packed that place up in a handbasket and mailed it, priority shipping, to Hell”.

@Darth_Algar Good point and taking out Saddam was the biggest mistake of the campaign as he was a stabilizing figurehead in that region who kept all the real crazies at bay. Same effect by taking out Bin Laden. As much as we hated him, his own people feared him even more. Plus murdering him in cold blood and then going on book tours bragging about it doesn’t help matters at all.

I don’t know or care what the president wants to call them. They are terrorists, jihadists, Islamists, scum, filth, rapists, and murderers.

@cruiser
Have you seen my recent posts of quotes from Bin Laden, shoe bomber, underwear bomber, French shooter, Boston bomber?
They all say the same exact thing. “we attack you, because you attack us and our people.”
http://www.fluther.com/178219/are-we-missing-a-key-point-in-the-war-on-terrorism/

Terrorism is all about perspective. It’s way too convenient to call people that we are at war with, terrorists. It keeps a never-ending enemy.

It’s even easier to point out that the terrorists are evil because our media shows us videos of them beheading people, but NEVER, ever, do they show us the destruction that we cause over there. When you drop a bomb on people, it does way worse than just behead someone, but out of sight, out of mind.
We know exactly how many people were killed in 9/11, in Boston, in France, but we have no idea how many people have been killed in the Middle East due to our foreign policy, nor do we care.

It’s a shame that as divided as our screwed up, 2 party system is, the only thing the 2 parties can agree on, is war.

And btw, we spend more on offense defense EVERY YEAR, than almost every other country combined. If you consider us weak, then we really need to reconsider our priorities, and stop spending all of this money on defense that is supposed to keep us “free and prosperous,” because I don’t know about you, but in my eyes, we have lost more essential freedoms and prosperity over the past 15 years, then ever before.

@SquirrelEStuff America doesn’t spend its defence money as efficiently as other countries, so raw numbers aren’t really an appropriate measure. For example, the F-35 is the most expensive military program in history, but it’s a piece of sh*t compared to the Su-35.

But that’s just an aside. The quotes you love to post aren’t the whole story. Radical Islamic ideology has become a haven for professional victims. When they carry out murderous riots, they blame it on Western cartoonists. When they sink into sectarian conflict, they blame Western interference. They simply cannot accept culpability in the way a Western politician is forced to. They rape slaves and behead aid workers, but Israel are the true bad guys. Yeah right.

Islamists will never admit that they are violent because of their ideology. They are extremely skilled in deflecting blame elsewhere, because in their minds they are not culpable. Even our allies in the Middle East fund terrorists, and they’re the ones that benefited from our foreign policy. Islamists have been attacking the West for 1400 years, and they are hardly going to stop if we were to pack up and leave them alone.

But of course the self-loathing element in our society would like to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it’s all our fault. When it comes to blaming the victim, they’re no better than the Islamists who stone rape victims to death for adultery.

Sorry, but a nation that engages in aggressive foreign policy all over the world isn’t a victim. Hell, the CIA (of all things) had been saying even back in the 1950s that such policies would provoke actions against us.

Darth history goes back further than just the 20th century. Why do you think the aggressive foreign policy exists in the first place?

Certainly not because of a bunch of religious extremists in the desert. Our aggressive foreign policy is to further US interests. Period. It’s been this way since this country was founded (much like the British Empire of former days).

@SquirrelEStuff “It’s a shame that as divided as our screwed up, 2 party system is, the only thing the 2 parties can agree on, is war.”

You/people tend to like to make a statement like that and conveniently forget that either party in Congress is entirely elected by people like you and me…so look in the mirror and point to that person directly in front of you. The power of your vote coupled with your ability to write a demanding letter/email to your elected official to voice your opinion(s) is how Democracy works. Pontificating on Fluther about what troubles you about Americas conduct good or bad is not….just sayin.

Darth more to the point, the purpose of foreign policy is the further the interests of a country in the face of the conflicting interests of other powers. The Islamic Middle East has largely been an opposing power of the old powers for its entire existence, from the wars against the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic invasions of southern Europe, the Crusades, the Reconquista, the movements of the Ottoman Empire, the defeat of the Ottomans in WW1, and right through to the modern day. The aggressive foreign policy of the US in the region is in many ways a continuation of this pattern. The lands in which we operate aggressively, as you put it, were part of the sphere of influence of the West before Islam even existed. The original Islamic armies attacked the Christian world because of a difference in ideology, and set in motion the events that echo through today’s world.

If Western foreign policy is aggressive in defending our interests, then good. I’d be very disappointed in any government that only represented our interests half-heartedly. The Islamists set themselves up in opposition to claim what was never theirs, hide behind civilians, force children to carry out suicide bombings, and then cry foul when civilians die in the crossfire. The difference is we actually care when we take out civilians. We spend billions on costly warfighting techniques that specifically avoid civilian casualties. Meanwhile the Islamists kill dissenters in the street, threatening those that survive, and blaming the West for everything they can think of. But we’re the real bad guys, right?

“The difference is we actually care when we take out civilians. We spend billions on costly warfighting techniques that specifically avoid civilian casualties.” – This might actually be the biggest line of bull that I’ve read on this site.

You might sincerely believe that, but an honest, objective look should tell you otherwise. Even our term for civilian casualties, “collateral damage”, reveals just how cold and uncaring we are towards civilian casualties.

Also, a nation can vigorously look after its own interests without shitting in everyone else’s yard.

You’re so determined to believe the worst about the West that you dismiss a fact out of hand.

Remember when Israel used cluster bombs to take out terrorists a few years back? The outrage was (rightly) fever pitch, and they haven’t done it since. Increased battle awareness in the public arena has made civilian casualties politically unacceptable, and as such we avoid it. We now use precision guided bombs, to improve accuracy and reduce civilian casualties. If we could kill them in the desert, we would. But terrorists hide in populous areas precisely so that civilians will die and make the headlines, garnering sympathy in the population. This fact doesn’t deter us though, and nor should it.

Also, a nation cannot look after its interests without clashing with other countries. Interests overlap, and when they do it is the responsibility of each government to obtain the optimal balance on behalf of their citizens.

Determined to believe the worst about the west? Hardly. I’m simply not willfully blind to our country’s failings.