By Paul Avallone, author of Tattoo Zoo
The English language has changed a bit in the past four hundred years. An appropriate example is Shakespeare’s “wherefore” of Juliet’s beseeching into the night “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” The word has nothing to do with “where,” but translates today as “why.” Juliet’s plea was for Romeo to be anyone but a Montague. “O, be some other name!” she wished aloud. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.”
Can’t you see President Obama out on the White House Truman Balcony crying into the night, “Wherefore art thou I-sis?” Can’t you hear his own beseeching, “Oh, be some other name!”? Can’t you hear the tremble in his voice as he begs, “That which we call I-sis, by any other word would smell as rancid?”
No, you can’t hear that, any of that?
Neither can I. And for probably different reasons. You might believe that Obama can’t verbalize the “I” (Islam, or Islamic) part of ISIS because he’s secretly a Muslim or for some other lingering childhood psychosis that I’ll leave for future Freudian shrinks to shine their hot klieg lights upon when they’re no longer politically invested in propping up their wax idol.
In the present, today, the reality is that Obama can’t bring himself to admit aloud that ISIS is Islamic, regardless the very meaning of that first “I”—Islamic. His own paid hacks, like State Department Deputy Spokesperson blond bombshell Marie Harf, play right along, but reasonable people across the political spectrum are agreeing with Graeme Wood’s Atlantic essay that nails ISIS and other Islamic warriors as devoutly religious Muslims. As Islamic. As strictly following the Koran.
So, it would appear that Obama has gotten himself into a bit of a bind. If things get worse and Obama’s “violent extremists” (they’re not Islamic!) overrun a platoon of Marine trainers or behead a team of U.S. Special Forces, all played out on video with “Allahu Akbar” the running scrawl across the bottom of the screen, what’s he going to call them in his Oval Office address intended to cheerlead us into marching off and bleeding and dying for his cause? “Violent Extremists”? That we’re to wage war against the “V-Es?”
Yeh right, try and muster up an army when you can’t even call the enemy what he calls himself.
If you’re of the belief that ISIS must and should be stopped in its tracks and vanquished (along with any other active jihadists), you should consider giving Obama a hand at mustering up a spirited army to do the fighting. For the sake of the country, mind you, not his. To rally America to war. Swallow your pride and do your patriotic duty and follow Obama’s example and rid your vocabulary of any negative or violent reference to Islam. Or, actually, any reference to it at all. Remember, really, it’s no big deal, “What’s in a name?”
First step in erasing the name ISIS is to make it Tea Party. Everywhere, in everything written and everything spoken, substitute Tea Party for ISIS. You want to see Obama turn on a dime lickety-split and breathe fire-and-brimstone in an Oval Office address before sending into Iraq and Syria 75,000 GIs, let’s all do the big switcharoo, from every headline to op-ed to TV pundit, let it be “Tea Party,” not “ISIS.”
Heck, who needs Petraeus or Patton or Grant leading the charge across the desert, when we’ve got Lois Lerner upon whom Obama can slap four stars, with the order to “have at it with the Tea Party?”
And don’t stop with just the moniker Tea Party. Describe these barbaric villains as “man-made climate change deniers.” Smear them as “anti-gay marriage.” Label them as “white privileged frat boys” who are “steeped in a culture of rape.” Bust my buttons, you’ll have both Obamas—he and the Mrs—at the airstrip sprinkling flower pedals on the tarmac seeing our soldiers off to war, if you define the savages as “bitter clingers to their guns and Fox News.”
Finally, if you really want Obama to go after ISIS in a viciously waged war, just call them the “Sons of Timothy McVeigh.” Now that would be some serious ass-whoopin’.
(For the record, McVeigh was executed six years after his OKC bombing. Muslim Nidal Hasan, on death row now nearly six years after his Fort Hood shooting, enjoying many more years while awaiting innumerable appeals, has recently formally requested citizenship of ISIS—whoops, the Tea Party/Sons of McVeigh.)
What’s in a name? Juliet had no idea how spot-on 21st century she was four hundred years ago. Where art thou, Juliet, when we need you?
(Next week: With Lois Lerner in 4-star command, a how-to to defeat the bastards, whatever you call them.)
Paul Avallone spent three-plus years in Afghanistan as a Green Beret then an embedded civilian journalist. His novel of the Afghan War, Tattoo Zoo was published in December.