Race to the lace
Polistra's Fifth Law of Human Nature:

You can't expect to see the right thing done for the right reason. Be happy to get the right thing, even when it's done for awful reasons.

= = = = =

Today's R-brand talking point is the attempt by some D-brand Congresscritters to avoid using the terms "Global War On Terror" and "Long War". The R-brand talking points vendors are, as usual, squawking about Orwell and Euphemisms.

Stop.

Think about this for a minute.

"Global War On Terror" is already a delicate Victorian lace-and-perfume euphemism, which avoids all honest and bellicose description.

A correct term for this war, if we were actually fighting it, would be "Crusade Against Mohammed" or maybe "New Crusade".

It was the army of Mohammed that started this war, just as they have done every century since 700 AD. So it's historically accurate, and thus helpful, to use an understandable term for the counter-offensive.

"Long War" is not exactly a euphemism, but it's even more dangerous. As I've said a dozen times here, Long = Losing. Not just because of our short attention span, but because a long war leads us to be comfortable with a certain level of damage. More to the point with this particular enemy, a Long War gives the enemy plenty of time to multiply and subvert, and gives us plenty of time to adjust to Sharia. If we get it over with quickly, by vaporizing as many "holy" places as possible and killing as many Arabs as possible, we will then force the enemy to do the adjusting.

This is as it should be.

We are right. They are wrong.

We are civilized. They are primitive.

If we mean to defend civilization, our job is to create as much chaos as possible within the camp of the savages, so that they must either take on the mantle of civilization or die entirely.

All of this has been true for 500 years. We saw it and described it clearly in 1944; we used the word Crusader to describe our men, and we unflinchingly named the savagery of the Krauts and Nips. We won that war, and the Krauts and Nips are peaceful people now because we won it.

So I'd rather see the euphemisms go away, even for the wrong reasons, because eliminating false distinctions is necessary. Without the euphemisms, we stand a better chance of finding the path toward victory. With the euphemisms, we will continue this insane and suicidal fake "debate" between fast surrender (the D side) and slow painful surrender (the R side.)
  ¶ 6:46 PM