Avoiding the Term Terrorism

For John, BLUF:  To not properly name something is to not understand it.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Yes, Hamas is Legally, Morally, and Factually a Terrorist Organization

From Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks, by Jonathan Turley, 25 October 2023.

Here is the lede plus three:

Below is my column in the New York Post on the Associated Press guideline for reporters to avoid calling Hamas a terrorist organization.  Voice of America and other media outlets have made the same decision.  This is not about supporting the Palestinian cause.  It is about correctly describing a group that commits terrorist attacks as a terrorist organization.

Here is the column:

Confucius once said that “the beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.” That does not appear to be the approach of the Associated Press this week after the media organization told its reporters not to call Hamas fighters “terrorists” after they massacred civilians, raped women, and took a couple hundred hostages from Israel on Oct. 7.

I urge you to read the whole thing.  And to contemplate the slippage in our national media as a source of solid information for our American Citizens and their decision making.

To deny that Hamas used terrorism on 7 October is to obscure the brilliance of their action.  They have pub Israel in an awkward poosition.  The brutality of of the attack demands a reaction, and a strong reaction.  However, too much of a reactioon would bring the condemnatioon of the world.  As it is, before Israel started its ground incursioon into Gaza, there were large demonstratioons on various US Ivy League Campuses in favor of, believe it or not, Hamas.♠ 

Since "war is the continuation of politics by other means"♥, a goal of Hamas is to garner world wide support for an independent Palestine on the land now making up israel.  To deny that this is terrorism is to fail to understand what is going on and to try and make it into something it is not.  Again quoting Carl von Clausewitz and On War.

The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.

Name it and know it.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  While the Students may not realize it, by chanting "From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free" they are calling for the elimination of Isrsel as a state and the death of the seven million Jews living there.  Not very attractive.
♥  Carl von Clausewitz, On War.

Why Be Engaged in Europe?

For John, BLUF:  This is about World War One, The Great War, of which we have a number of memorials here in Lowell, including Kittredge Park.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Lesson of the Great War:  Stay Engaged, America

Here is the sub-headline:

A century after the guns fell silent, the United States risks replicating the errors of the past.

From Defense One, by Professor Eliot A Cohen, 9 July 2018.

I do disagree with Professor Cohen on one point.  I believe the Commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), General John "Black Jack" Pershing, was right to want the US forces to be committed as a whole, rather than in penny packets along the front.  The reason was psychological.  Support for the war would be enhanced by American performance and diminished by American accomplishments being blurred in with those of the French and British.

If we glance at Dead Carl for a moment we see the emotional, the psychological, as the first in the three items listed in his "Trinity".  It appears General Pershing knew this.  One suspects President Wilson, with his Southern background, would have sensed it also.

But, back to the larger theme, we do need to stay engaged in Europe, because it will likely cost us in the long run to not be so engaged.

Regards  —  Cliff

Where Should Our Focus Be With Regard to Daech?

For John, BLUF:  If you can't answer the Center of Gravity question all you can do is play whack-a-mole.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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One of President Obama's opening lines in his Oval Office talk Sunday last was:

We are at war with Terrorism.

A friend of mine noted in an EMail:

As Eliot Cohen wrote shortly after George W declared the Global War on Terrorism, “Declaring war on Terrorism after 9/11 makes about as much sense as declaring war on Dive Bombers after Pearl Harbor.”

This comment about being "at war with terrorism" is, for me, the one slip in the President's 13 minute talk from the Oval Office.  Terrorism is a tactic.  We need to better define the enemy than a tactic he uses. The tactic is not a "center of gravity".  To win, as Dead Carl tells us, we need to identify the enemy center of Gravity.

Here is a 35 page monograph on the topic of a center of gravity.

Now it is your turn, dear read:

What do you think is the Center of Gravity we need to identify?

The Daesh (ISIS) leadership.

The Daesh (ISIS) forces in the field.

The financing for Daesh.

Saudi support for Daesh

The ability of Daesh to recruit soldiers from Europe and the US.

The Wahhabist religion they follow.

Their apocalyptic world view.

The inability of Islam to look inward and self criticize.

The weakness of the Syrian and Iraqi Governments.

Something else (please describe in Comments).

 

pollcode.com free polls

Regards  —  Cliff