The last word

There are a lot of words floating around our media that seem to be used indiscriminately without providing any definitions. Words like terrorist, militant, radical Islamic state and moderate Arab state appear everywhere, but I am not always clear who we are talking about. Unless we come up with a truth in labeling law for the media that requires a definition of terms be attached to each article, we may need another vehicle to decipher the information. Looking at examples of what is being described might be helpful. Under that method it appears that a radical Islamic state is a state that is unable to support US policies because it has sufficient democratic institutions that the government needs to be sensitive to the opinions of its citizens. A moderate Arab state seems to be an authoritarian state whose leaders do not have listen to their citizens and therefore can support US policies. This division does, at times seem to create some odd situations. Recently US intelligence officials showed media representatives a sampling of weapons that they claimed were provided by the “radical Islamic state”, Iran, to Iraqi “militants” and “terrorists”. The officials claimed that these weapons had killed 170 American troops since the beginning of the war. When I heard this I wondered where the weapons have come from that killed the other 3000 soldiers. For answers to questions like this it is generally useful to follow the money. In this case I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that road didn’t lead through the “moderate Arab state” of Saudi Arabia. These are the folks that brought us most of the 9/11 highjackers, the mujahadeen in Afghanistan including Osama bin Laden and who export the intolerant, fundamentalist Wahabist version of Islam throughout the world. This situation raises the question: “How do situations like this happen?”. A few years ago I learned in Sunday School that when one is reading the book known to the church as the Gospel of Matthew and one asks the question “Why is this story included?”, the answer is usually Moses. In the case of the Middle East, when one asks the question “Why is this odd behavior happening?”, the answer is usually oil.