You say jihaydi I say jihahdi

The Drumstir tentatively supports yet another name change for what we now know as the War on terror. A War on Jihadism, he feels, have the merit of separating moderate Islam from the extreme version in people's minds. Frankly, I think it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. The problem of conflating all of Islam with extreme fundamentalist Islam runs too deep to be ameliorated by changing (yet again) the name of this nebulous "war" we're fighting.

I don't know if I've mentioned this on the ol' blog yet, but I have gone completely crazy and decided to take a job working at a tapas bar in Taipei for a while. It's a small restaurant so I am a kind of combination bartender/sandwich maker/dishwasher/waitress. A while ago, a libertarian-conservative type came in for a few Budweisers. He thinks we're supposed to "stay the course" in Iraq even though it was a mistake, though he doesn't think we can blame Bush because "hindsight is 20/20". He is a textbook case of the incredibly naive conservative who likes to posture as a hardened realist. "Islam is an incredibly immature religion. They don't play by the rules of civilized engagement. There is no other culture that uses suicide tactics like that. It is enabled by their sick belief that there are 70 virgins waiting for them in the afterlife." I think I came this close to calling him stupid straight out. When I tried to tell him that it is the extreme version of Islam that we are trying to fight but that we are alienating moderate muslim everywhere with our little adventures in the Middle East, he look at me with a blank look that said "does not compute". He then tried the old "liberals are soft of fundamentalist Islam" bullshit which does not fly at all with me because my lefty feminist friends were fuming about the Taliban way back in the 90s.

ANGELICA: So, tell me. If we had to go into Afgahnistan and Iraq to save the Muslims from themselves and the world in the process, why is that Iraq and Afgahnistan are both currently basket-case states getting more extreme and fundamentalist by the minute?

CONSERVOLIBERTARIAN GUY, shocked: "You expect to blame Bush for that?"

Why yes. yes I do.

He's promised to come back with a book for me that will show me the error of my ways. With an apology to my Jewish friends, Oy Vey!