By M. Zuhdi Jasser
Recently, the Obama administration released a message to senior Pentagon officials instructing that the term "Global War on Terror" is no longer to be used. It is to be replaced with "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO). Set aside the flashbacks to meaningless phrases employed by "Big Brother" in Orwell's 1984, are we really now of the opinion that there is no common unifying ideology which hatches the radical Islamist groups attacking us?
Many of us have been proclaiming for quite a while that the "War on Terror" (WoT) was obviously misnamed. A nation cannot have a military engagement (a war) against a tactic. It would have been no different to have called WWII a "War on Blitzkrieg." We were rather more clearly fighting the ideologies of Nazism and fascism. But OCO is a major step backward from WoT. The current conflict can also be defined against an ideology. It is certainly not about random acts of violence. There are some obvious and definable common ideologies and goals of the perpetrators of radical Islamism. Their primary unifying cause is the overriding ideology and dream of Islamism -- the goal of establishing the Islamic state. Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbullah, HAMAS, the Taliban, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, Lashkar e-Taiba, Jamaat Islamiya, Muhajiroon or the Wahhabis of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to name a few, these groups all have common core ideologies driving their radical movements. The commonality of these groups is simply put -- radicalized Islamism. Radical because they seek "any means necessary" including terror -- "the targeting of noncombatants." They are "Islamist" because their ultimate goal is the establishment of various forms of "Islamic states." Thus we can no longer ignore the fact that non-radical (non-violent) Islamists who seek a peaceful means of establishing an Islamic state are also part of a global movement which stands against western secular liberal democracies. Read more ...
Recently, the Obama administration released a message to senior Pentagon officials instructing that the term "Global War on Terror" is no longer to be used. It is to be replaced with "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO). Set aside the flashbacks to meaningless phrases employed by "Big Brother" in Orwell's 1984, are we really now of the opinion that there is no common unifying ideology which hatches the radical Islamist groups attacking us?
Many of us have been proclaiming for quite a while that the "War on Terror" (WoT) was obviously misnamed. A nation cannot have a military engagement (a war) against a tactic. It would have been no different to have called WWII a "War on Blitzkrieg." We were rather more clearly fighting the ideologies of Nazism and fascism. But OCO is a major step backward from WoT. The current conflict can also be defined against an ideology. It is certainly not about random acts of violence. There are some obvious and definable common ideologies and goals of the perpetrators of radical Islamism. Their primary unifying cause is the overriding ideology and dream of Islamism -- the goal of establishing the Islamic state. Whether it is the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbullah, HAMAS, the Taliban, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, Lashkar e-Taiba, Jamaat Islamiya, Muhajiroon or the Wahhabis of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to name a few, these groups all have common core ideologies driving their radical movements. The commonality of these groups is simply put -- radicalized Islamism. Radical because they seek "any means necessary" including terror -- "the targeting of noncombatants." They are "Islamist" because their ultimate goal is the establishment of various forms of "Islamic states." Thus we can no longer ignore the fact that non-radical (non-violent) Islamists who seek a peaceful means of establishing an Islamic state are also part of a global movement which stands against western secular liberal democracies. Read more ...
Source: Huffington Post
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