Saturday, March 14, 2009

Who's Putting Lipstick On Pigs Now?

by Penbrook Johannson

Offering another irrelevant token intended to cancel the Bush Administration’s anti-terrorism measures, Barack Obama is rescinding official terminology previously used to accurately describe accused terror suspects held at Guantanamo Prison.

The Obama Administration appears more willing to change how we label evil, without the resolve to actually prevent it from happening. Obama has made the decree, in concert with a decision to shut down the detention facility, without offering any alternative how the detainees will be classified, or where they will be held, in the future.

But, what else should we expect from such a talented word-smith?

By implementing the ornamental directive, Obama continues to diminish America’s aversion to death-by-terrorism, this time, by prohibiting the use of the terms “enemy combatants” within his administration. These terms were created by the Bush Administration to describe unarraigned detainees arrested on the battle field.

In an attempt to cosmetically enhance American opinion about alleged terrorist prisoners, Obama has recently engaged a massive public relations campaign to “redistribute” America’s prevailing support for the theory that, since terrorists want to kill us, they indeed must be bad. Describing them as "enemies" and "combative" appears to oppose Obama's insidious policy against violating the rights of terrorists to not be offended. In doing so, he hopes to undermine the effective asceticism of the Bush Administration while gaining global support for his rendition of a softer, more legally friendly, anti-terror stratagem.

It appears another version of the proverbial “Lipstick On a Pig” joke is making the rounds on our political stage. Only, this time, its not about soccer moms.

And, it’s not funny.

Throwing adjectives and superlatives at our terrorist enemies until they run out of bullets and bombs is not an acceptable strategy. Disregarding the fact that the Bush Administration provided eight years of safety and zero domestic casualties since 9/11, Obama is demonstrating to the world that we are less willing to heed the tragic requiem of American victims than we are to afford inalienable rights to murderous aliens. And, we do this in betrayal of our battlefield heroes, while we receive into ourselves a definition of terrorism that alleviates liberal guilt for having the audacity to not want to be murdered.

Most frightening, however, the Obama administration is implementing a strategy against terrorism by putting the interests and sentiments of our enemies before our own. By merely overhauling public relations and diplomacy as his primary weapon to combat religiously self-justified murderers, it appears Obama is more concerned about offending Islamic radicals than he is about protecting Americans in the future. Meanwhile, thousands of terrorists all over the world will take account of Obama's decisions and conclude their tactics must actually be working.

And, rather than remember the reasons 3000 victims and their families have given us to remain vigilant and unrelenting, Obama is choosing to acknowledge individuals who “communicate” with the world through the language of homicidal annihilation. Unfortunately, the terrorists Obama hopes to accommodate through this extraneous “redefinitive” gesture are not even in Guantanamo Prison, and couldn't care less about his politics, or his anti-Bush strategy. The suspects captured thus far are not diplomatic, and the only relations future terrorists desire with the public are ones in which we act like good, little unprotected targets submitting to their destruction.

The lack of willingness to use the harshest terms possible in reference to any captured radical reveals a startling weakness in the Obama administration’s priority to uphold American security ahead of offending foreign governments. It makes one question whether or not Mr. Obama would have the substance of character to respond in the harshest way to another cataclysmic event at the hands of Islamic murderers.

America can only hope that Obama begins to take less advice from his public relations apparatus and more from his joint chiefs.

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