I notice that in my haste, I have used the word "terrorist" repeatedly -- even to the point where it appears in the title of my last post!

I am chagrined, and at a loss for words. The BBC (and other like-minded progressive forces of the world) have decided that words like "terrorist" are judgmental, and get in the way of understanding:

The BBC has re-edited some of its coverage of the London Underground and bus bombings to avoid labelling the perpetrators as "terrorists", it was disclosed yesterday.

Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC's website spoke of terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers simply as "bombers".

The BBC's guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments".

Consequently, "the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding" and its use should be "avoided", the guidelines say.

This complete inability to acknowledge reality has gotten so ridiculous that numerous bloggers are resorting to satire.

Jeff Goldstein (the source of the link about not using the "M" word) hits the nail on the head:

I’ve been arguing for years now that a pervasive cultural fear of plain spokenness (as witnessed by the growing appeal, among those whose greatest fear is giving offense, of “tolerance” statutes and “free speech zones”—both feeble attempts to control speech, either by diluting it to the point of semiotic uselessness or by making it contingent on arbitrary logistics) is one of the greatest dangers facing liberal democracies, something now being thrown into sharp relief as British community leaders and politicians schooled on the kind of innate cultural relativism that multiculturalist dogma inevitably encourages struggle to frame the recent London terror bombings in a way that manages to negotiate both the semantic demands of their cultural philosophy and the facts on the ground.

Ironically, such problems cease to exist outside the balkinizing paradigm of multiculturalism, which, by empowering identity groups and ethnicities at the expense of individualism and nationalism, actually promotes factional disputes and leads, predictably and inexorably, to the very kind of scenario where a few individuals become representative of the cultural group that “produced” them—and where, in order to avoid tainting the whole group with the actions of a handful of its members, advocates of multiculturalism are forced, retroactively and unconvincingly, to sever ties to those individuals rather than surrender the fiction of a unified group identity.

Which is why identity-based cultural philosophies that encourage or coerce one identity group to speak of another only on its own terms, leads to the kind of PC nonsense that prevents us from clearly identifying and articulating a specific problem, should it happen that that problem falls within the protected space of the Other.

Having completed the first two steps—identifying the causes and understanding them—the third step in our four-step process for getting at “root causes” and using that information to defeat terror becomes quite obvious: KILL THE TERRORISTS WHO BLOW SHIT UP BEFORE THEY ARE ABLE TO BLOW SHIT UP.¹ This seems disarmingly simple, I realize, but sometimes the most complicated problems are best met with the most common sense solutions.

Not to Stephen Green, who cites America's longstanding Jacksonian tradition:

millions of Americans - probably a wartime majority - do hold by Jackson's traditions. We try to play fair, and mostly we succeed. But we will not play fair with those who refuse to honor the rules of the game.

Anyway, whatever you might want to call it, it's there, it's part of the American spirit, it can be mean and ugly when activated, and it ain't going away anytime soon.

And the debate over what Glenn Reynolds calls "terror bombing euphemisms" highlights the absurd, elephant-in-the-room nature of politically correct semanticism when people are faced with a choice of killing the enemy, or being killed by the enemy. Here's Bill Hobbs:

[E]ven after Muslim terrorists bombed London's transit system, the BBC can't quite bring itself to calling them terrorists. Miller and his clever readers have some alternate euphemisms. My favorite is "mobile self-demolition specialists.".

Anyway, the people who we can't call "terrorists" or "Muslims" but have to call "bombers". . .

Wait! The "bombing" charge is only an unproven allegation! So we can't even call any actual people "bombers." I should have said alleged bombers....

What, then, should we call them? I have agonized over this to the extent that I can, and I find myself drawn inexorably to what their co-religionists (and major newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer) portray as their motivation:

"What happens now depends on how the British government responds," said Luton resident Sadaqat Hussein, 18. "They need to stop blaming all Muslims for it. And they need to wake up and realize we are in a democracy, and we need to stop this illegal war in Iraq."

Therein lies another quandary: In interviews over the last week, young Muslim men repeatedly have made it clear that while they disagree with the methods of the suicide bombers, they are sympathetic to the presumed cause - a passionate opposition to Britain's role in what they see as deeply immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many British Muslims view as equally reprehensible, for example, the attacks on the World Trade Center and this year's U.S. invasion of Fallujah, which killed about 1,500 Iraqis.

I don't see much dispute that the bombings were committed by people who were:

NOT terrorists; and

NOT Muslims!

anti-war activists!

With apologies to all terrorists and Muslims who might fear guilt by association, I will try to use the proper terminology in the future.

ANOTHER CORRECTION: Or is it? After hastily using the term "Shermanism," I began to wonder about a linguistic inconsistency with "Jacksonianism." Might the correct word be "Shermanianism"? I don't know. Somehow, calling someone's thinking "Shermanian," or calling that person a "Shermanianist" seems strained to me. But there is the problematic distinction between "Marxism" and "Marxianism" (the former being support for Marx, with the latter being analytical terminology), and so I am confused. Shouldn't true believers in Andrew Jackson's philosophy properly be called "Jacksonists"?

(But really! Would any of this hair-splitting matter to a Jacksonian?)