Obama: Rogue States Are Now “Outliers”

Can this toady possibly get any more stupid?
More PC bullshit from President Punchdrunk.

Via Politico.

“Rogue states” is being pushed aside in favor of the less confrontational “outliers.”
“Islamic radicalism” is being converted to the less religiously freighted “violent extremism.”
And in one of the most important speeches of his presidency, Barack Obama omitted a term that was the Bush administration’s obsession, terrorism, as part of a larger effort to de-emphasize the issue in America’s relations with Muslim states.

Diplomats, academics and foreign leaders are hotly debating whether Obama, who won the White House promising dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy, has actually substantively changed much. But there’s little question that he has made a pronounced shift in how the U.S. talks about the rest of the world — and in a way that has opened him up to charges of being soft toward America’s enemies.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was so incensed at the administration’s recent decision to end its use of the phrase “Islamic extremism” that he fired off a letter to Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. Lieberman worries that if Obama doesn’t confront the true nature of the threat, he can’t stop it.

“The failure to identify our enemy for what it is — violent Islamist extremism — is offensive and contradicts thousands of years of accepted military and intelligence doctrine to ‘know your enemy,’” Lieberman wrote, later calling the decision “absolutely Orwellian” in a TV interview.

And Republicans have lined up to point to the rhetorical recalibrations as evidence that Obama is naive and dangerously out of his depth.

“It’s evidence of a lack of seriousness in understanding the nature of the problem they face,” John Bolton, the Bush administration’s ambassador to the United Nations and a frequent Obama critic, told POLITICO. “This administration is really ‘Innocents Abroad.’ … It’s a dangerous policy for us. Obviously, one word isn’t the alpha and the omega, but it is another piece of evidence of the inexperience of this team.”

The White House often tries to downplay the changes, but observers say officials must expect that the linguistic shifts will have substantive impact. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother with moves that leave Obama so vulnerable to criticism.

“They are taking a significant political risk when they do these kinds of things, when they make any kind of deviation from the status quo,” said Dan Drezner, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. “These sorts of things generate all kinds of blowback. They have to think the blowback is worth it; otherwise, making the changes would be both stupid and thankless.”

The administration defends the moves, saying that by needlessly antagonizing or alienating nations and groups, it can make it harder for the U.S. to build alliances against violent extremists.

……At a recent briefing, the State Department defended the decision to move away from using the term “Islamic radicalism.”

“We do confront a global movement of terrorists, violent extremists. … not all of them are Islamic. I think it would be a mistake to say that this is about one part of the world or one community,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “We oppose people who employ violence for political purposes regardless of where they are. And Al Qaeda is working hard to extend its network to all corners of the world, including here in the United States.”

……“This administration believes it can replace reality with words. And if it has the right words in the right order, things will happen,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said recently at a breakfast organized by the American Spectator. “It’s almost like a medieval, philosophical argument, like alchemy, that if I can just work all these things out right, the world will transform itself to the world I want to live in.”

Lieberman also worries the shifting tone betrays a much more substantive problem.

“This is not honest,” Lieberman said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Three thousand Americans were killed not by some amorphous group of violent extremists or environmental extremists or white supremacist extremists. They were violent Islamist extremists motivated and organized by the ideology preached by Osama bin Laden.”

“And unless we’re honest about that,” he said, “we’re not going to be able to defeat this enemy.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35946.html

Can you imagine the United States adopting a tone in WWII that wouldn’t “needlessly antagonize or alienate” Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or the Imperialist Japanese? This is right in line with the other new words in Obama’s Book of Unicorns and Skittles, like “man-caused disasters” and “overseas contingency operations”.
The more this clueless dolt remains in office, the more he endangers this country and increases our vulnerability to another attack. These aren’t just words, this reflects an idiotic approach to the war on Islamofascism as a whole.
He sure doesn’t mince any words when it comes to American patriots. He’s joined right in with the chorus of mealy-mouthed leftwing media moonbats with the “tea bagger” phrase.
On planet Obama, military veterans, opponents of illegal aliens, and 2nd Amendment proponents are the real threat. Islamic terrorists committing atrocities and wanton murder for allah, are misunderstood and disenfranchised.

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