Lieberman: Obama refuses to say ‘violent Islamist extremism’

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Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Connecticut chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Thursday that the Obama administration has refused to use the term “violent Islamist extremism,” arguing that the White House’s overly cautious word parsing constitutes a refusal to ”speak honestly.”

Sen. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also said this makes the global fight against Islamic terrorism “harder” for the United States.

Lieberman focused his criticism on a recent report issued by the administration, titled “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” saying that it “suffers from several significant weaknesses.”

“The administration still refuses to call our enemy in this war by its proper name — violent Islamist extremism. You could find names that are comparable to that but not the ones that the administration continues to use, which are ‘violent extremism,’” Lieberman explained in a speech at the National Press Club sponsored by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

“It is not just violent — there are many forms of violent extremism, there’s white racist extremism, there’s been some environment–eco extremism, there’s been animal rights extremism. You could go on and on. There’s skinhead extremism. But we’re not in a global war with those. We’re in a global war that affects our homeland security with Islamist extremists.”

Lieberman then charged the administration with refusing to “speak honestly” about the threat of terrorism. (RELATED: Terrorist credits Hollywood for his recruitment)

“To call our enemy ‘violent extremism’ is so general and vague that it ultimately has no meaning. The other term used sometimes is ‘Al-Qaida and its allies.’ Now, that’s better but it still is too narrow, and focuses us on groups as opposed to what I would call an ideology, which is what we’re really fighting,” he said.

“I assume this refusal of the administration to speak honestly about the enemy is based on its desire not to do anything that might feed into Al-Qaida’s propaganda that we’re engaged in a — quote — ‘war against Islam,’ but that’s so self-evidently a lie that we can and have repudiated it, and I think we’ve done so effectively.”

“A reluctance, therefore, to identify our enemy as ‘violent Islamist extremism,’” Lieberman concluded, “makes it harder, I think, to mobilize effectively to fight this war of ideas.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/01/liebe ... z1WlsXJLmL

Who cares what he calls it. It's not like Obama's credentials in Jihadi killing can be brought into question. Pretending that that Obama is anything but a neoconservative on foreign policy seems like nothing more by a ploy to by neoconservatives to move the so called centers even further to their extreme so when you actually do get someone that believes in peace and diplomacy they're looked at as fringe nut cases. This is why we're in perpetual state of undeclared war.

It is a declared war and the stuff we do in other countries an all over the world is really tame to what we used to do with Russia more than 20 years ago. If we just declared "peace" in the war on terror and brought everyone home, that wouldn't be the end of it. Obama is not a neoconservative, he is just a pathetically weak leader whose narcissism sounded good to a lot of people on the campaign trail. He could not even take command of Bin Laden's assassination. Hillary, and the intelligence and defense heads had to take care of everything behind his back and get him off the golf course to be notified and brought in for a photo op when the helicopters were in Pakistani airspace. If you'll take a close look at that famous photo of him in the situation room. He is really pissed about something and nobody else there shares the sentiment.

Maybe the tea party and Ron Paul supporters could raise a big enough "money bomb" to get Obama a PGA tour sponsorship and let Biden be steward until January 2013?

Could simply be the desire to avoid a tongue twister. YOU say it six times fast.

This is so weak.

Right - those of us who did not see who Obama is going into the election have surely figured it out by now.

There is no point belaboring every manifestation of his nature.

Honestly, John Browning, are there times when even you look at the stupid crap you write and laugh?

Okay, John, first of all, war was never declared. The Constitution of the United States reserves the right to declare war to Congress specifically. All Congress ever issued was a wimpy "authorization for the use of force" - they never declared war against anybody. That's a big part of why it's turned into such a morass - if it were war, we could defeat the country we were at war with and go home.

Secondly, why is violent extremism by Muslims so much worse than violent extremism by anyone else? It wasn't a Muslim who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City; it wasn't an argument over Islam that waged over Ireland for so many weary decades; Islam wasn't even on the radar when we fought the Axis in WWII. Rival Islamic sects aren't shooting each other (and anyone else who happens to wear the wrong clothes) in South Central, or south King County, WA. Why should it be necessary to denounce Islamic extremism specifically, rather than simply denouncing violent extremism no matter the shroud it hides under? Do you truly believe the killers behind al Qaeda would be any nicer if they were Christian or Zoroastrian or something? Are atheists any less power-hungry by nature? (And if so, what of Lenin and Stalin?)

Better question, do you look at the stupid things you post and laugh, or do you honestly believe what you're posting despite the fact it is just plain stupidity. I'm guessing the latter.

Oh and before you start whining about me insulting you, if you can't take it, don't dish it out. I refuse to sit by and let you start bashing people and not call you out on it.

There's only one person what you wrote insults: yourself. Or, rather, your writings serve as a self-insult to your intellect.

Looks more like you only preach there should be civility when a Conservative says something to insult someone, but it is perfectly okay for a liberal to insult Conservatives and you don't find it to be wrong.

Hmmm, something you seem to have in common with Obama.

When the hell have I ever preached "civility"? I've regularly criticized the accommodationist attitude of Obama, Jon Stewart, and various "everyone's equally bad on both sides, let's sing Kumbya with our political enemies" American reform liberals. Heck, I've made threads praising conversational intolerance towards the wilfully ignorant.

By the way, from what I understand insults are supposed to be personal. So, calling someone an "idiot" is an insult, but calling their writings or views idiotic is not. I didn't say John Browning was stupid, I said he writes stupid crap.



Believe me, comming out of an unabashed tradition of Canadian social democracy I am worlds apart from the moderate conservative known as Obama. One of the first things I'd do if given the Presidency is start busting the union busters.

Considering you are one of the biggest authorities on posting stupid crap on this site (short of the gurus in the adult or love and dating forums that seem to sit in a Himalayan temple meditating how to make even more ret*d posts), I might have to try out your advice sometime.


The war on terror was authorized by congress, which is far from a new precedent. Such actions go back to the Barbary wars. Such authorizations have been used before the US issued it's first formal declaration of war and after it's last, and in between.

Violent extremism by Muslims is worse because there is nothing that can be done to reach a lasting treaty. The Oklahoma City bombing has been at least partially covered up, and it's questionable if McVeigh could have done it the way it was claimed, because an army corps of engineers experiment failed to do significant damage to their building because most of the force of the blast was lost traveling through the air, and they had to use proper pyrotechnic charges in the basement to copy the damage at OKC. Ireland isn't relevant to us, though they are an example of a group that you can eventually make a truce with. Despite the meteoric rise in right-wing extremist groups membership, organized plans for unprovoked attacks are only a literal handful and half-baked. It's not exactly a secret what they want, so not infringing on their personal liberty or the nation's sovereignty is the surest way too keep them from being a threat, and it's a whole lot cheaper than sophisticated surveillance systems and the manpower for it. Like Leiberman said: "We are not at war with them".

Islam WAS on the radar during WWII in the Balkans, Palestine, and British controlled Iraq. The only reason Islam was not an issue in the Philippines is that they had a vendetta against the Japanese. Islam was a huge factor in the Spanish-American war. So much so that it led to the development of the 1911 pistol and the .45 automatic round. Rival Islamic sects may not be in South Central or Kings county, but they do shoot at each other and blow up each other's mosques where they are active, and right now Hezbollah is believed to be active along the eastern end of Mexican border courtesy of their new allies, the Zetas. It's a strange alliance, but they would both benefit greatly from it. If they had been Christian or just about any other religion, the middle east and the world would be a much more stable and peaceful place. There's rarely any wars fueled by religion anymore, from tribes to regions to nations, that don't involve Muslims. It's always Muslims vs Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, or ancient tribal religions. Various groups have their little spats from time to time, but to really see the body count stack up you need to get Muslims involved. Unless you take a priest call him "your holiness" and make him believe he is second only to god, it's hard to make a devoutly [non-Muslim] religious man as power hungry as many atheists. Unlike the atheist, the religious man holds himself accountable to someone even if he is in a position of having to choose the least of all evils like our leaders usually have to do daily. The atheist has no such code to adhere to and does what is right in his own eyes, often treating doing what you want as a sacred rite regardless of what the long term consequences might be. Many Americans make displays of their religious beliefs when it serves their purposes, but to be a genuinely notorious tyrant you have to be unapologetically godless or Islamic-fascist, which often amounts to the same thing.

He also declines to defend islam.

I admire that he leaves religion out of it, frankly.

Lieberman is still angry that he was kicked out of the party and will no doubt campaign for the GOP this time as well. But this is a strange criticism to make. It may resonant with the usual nuts but it's not going to be much of a feature in the coming campaign. Obama has a very good record in killing jihadis.

Republicans will stick to the economy.

Joe Liebermann says he won't run and that's probably a good idea as many people in his state hate him, given that they really loved the Public Option.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/nyreg ... erman.html

Also, his own party (the Connecticut for Lieberman Party) was planning on running a candidate against him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticu ... man#Future