Obamaspeak

Matt Appuzzo reports that Obama advisers who are rewriting a document spelling out the country’s national security strategy to leave out references to “Islamic radicalism.” The officials with whom Appuzzo spoke demanded anonymity “because the document is still being written and is weeks away from release.” I would prefer to think that they did so out of embarrassment.
Appuzzo adds that at present the Bush-era national security strategy declares: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” In the age of Obama, this is a prohibited thought, and it is already an old story.
When you hear the Obama administration refer to “violent extremism” or “an isolated incident,” you will have to recall the words “jihad” and “Islam” or “Muslim” on your own. Like the authorities who developed Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984, the Obama administration requires a language whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.

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