Contributors

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

The Physics of Names

One of the changes in foreign policy that President Obama made was to stop using the phrase "war on terror." He cast Al Qaeda as an aberration not truly representative of Islam. Instead of attacking all Muslims, as too many Republicans have been wont to in their quest to score domestic political points, the president has been attacking the people who are actually responsible for murdering innocents, going after them with drones in Yemen and Pakistan.

Obama's strategy greatly confounded Osama bin Laden. In letters captured in Abbottabad and recently released, bin Laden lamented the fact that the name of Al Qaeda didn't include a reference to Islam, which allowed Obama to differentiate Al Qaeda from Islam. Obama's strategy greatly frustrated bin Laden and has made the job of taking down Al Qaeda easier.

Recent news of the latest underwear bomb plot further underscores this. The would-be bomber was actually a CIA double agent. I imagine it's a whole lot easier for the CIA to recruit Muslims to help us beat Al Qaeda when we aren't constantly trashing Muslims.

Which brings us to the real point: to win a war in a foreign country you need local allies. Many Republicans have been relentlessly attacking Muslims abroad but also Muslims in the United States. Remember the Ground Zero Mosque flap? (Which was neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero.)

This is not the way to win hearts and minds. When the president stopped using "war on terror" and denigrated Republican tropes like "islamo-fascists" the Republicans accused him of being soft and politically correct.

But they know all too well how effective these words are: they use them intentionally to whip up sentiment in their base. What they don't seem to understand is the Newtonian physics of name-calling: such words work up an equal and opposite sentiment in the people they are insulting,

When Republicans are constantly on the offensive against Islam even innocent accidents like the  burning of Korans in Afghanistan blow up into major international incidents in which dozens of people are killed and serious damage is done to the NATO mission against the Taliban.

Effective problem solving requires focusing on the actual source of the problem, rather than getting distracted by broader issues and causing other problems in the process. The problem is Al Qaeda terrorists. Not Islam. Not terror. But specifically Al Qaeda terrorists. Republican Muslim-baiting serves only to rekindle memories of the Crusades and tear open centuries-old wounds.

Republican broadsides against Islam also make the millions of Muslims who live in the United States wary. Republican insistence that America is a Christian country makes them wonder whether the Constitution that is supposed to guarantee freedom of religion will really protect them.

If we want American Muslims to have our back, we have to have theirs. And we can't insult them at every turn. It's simple physics.

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