Andrew C. McCarthy: Obama afraid to call it a 'war on terror'

President Obama's administration has been roundly ridiculed, and deservedly so, for its aversion to the language of war -- indeed, for the word war itself. From the Bush language purge, though, it was but a short hop to this sorry destination. Short and inevitable.
Saul Alinsky, Obama's community-organizing inspiration, waxed at length about language in "Rules for Radicals," about the power of words to inspire ... or to enervate.
The president learned his lessons well: bloodless prolixity deftly imposed from who knows where within Leviathan's sprawl. It was not the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or even the National Intelligence Directorate but the Office of Management and Budget that advised the Pentagon that the word war is now out.
"This administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror,' " said the new, March 2009 guidance. Our warriors were curtly told, "Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' "
How radical Islam and the left are sabotaging America
Monday: Obama is afraid to call it a war on terror
Tuesday: Ignorance about Islamic radicalism is our downfall
Wednesday: State Department offers terrorist apologetics on silver screen
That this "overseas contingency" on which we are "operating" has left a rather large (and still unfilled) hole in the ground in lower Manhattan apparently was beside the point. Or, better, was exactly the point.
War is a powerful word, redolent of power, force, zeal and national purpose. That is why the left routinely invokes war in its beloved campaigns against poverty, obesity, and other abstractions.
Real wars, the forcible defense of our nation and the pursuit of our interests, are to be avoided. So are real enemies.
Thus came the complementary announcement (an affirmation filed in federal court by Attorney General Eric Holder) that "enemy combatants" aren't enemy combatants anymore. They are simply "individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay."
Unfortunately, that formulation ran the risk that we might confuse jihadists with Cuban refugees.
During the Clinton administration, in which Holder served as deputy attorney general, those apprehended while seeking to escape Communist tyranny also became known as "individuals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay" -- a policy aggressively defended by the Justice Department at the time, without much harrumphing from the left.
Perhaps that's why Holder interchangeably used "individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations" -- more precise, though not quite as catchy.
As in the final Bush years, "Islam" is not to be uttered in conjunction with "terror." Our "contingency" is only with "violent extremists," and we wouldn't presume to suggest that they are motivated by anything other than, say, George Bush, Abu Ghraib or the existence of Guantanamo Bay.
In Obamalogic, people who live in foreign sharia societies where women are stoned for adultery somehow appreciate the American jurisprudential distinction between detention under the laws of war and detention under civilian due process. And what do you know? Just like the American left, they turn out to be profoundly offended by the military detention.
That, we're told, is the root cause of terro-- er, violent extremism -- notwithstanding that there was no Gitmo on 9/11 or during the raft of atrocities that predated it. The word terror is passe. We wouldn't want to use a term that comes straight out of the Koran. Rather than terrorism, Obama's hapless Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained, she prefers the term "man-caused disaster."
Bloodless is one thing, but mindless?
A civilization fights to preserve itself or it dies. Has ours become so hollow, such a pale imitation of its former self? Do we lack the capacity even to speak of the evils arrayed against us? Have we become so cowardly that our censure is reserved for our saviors, not our pillagers?
The Grand Jihad is banking on it.