Counterterrorism Blog

I noticed something unusual last night during President Bush's State of the Union speech - he never used the words "Islamic" or "Islamist" to describe the most dangerous forms of terrorism and extremism which the U.S. and the West face in the Middle East and around the world. Contrast that to his 2007 SOTU speech (emphases mine):

"Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists, possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology. Take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the opposite. They preach with threats ... instruct with bullets and bombs ... and promise paradise for the murder of the innocent... These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah - a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken... The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans ... kill democracy in the Middle East ... and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale."

And take a look at a segment in his 2006 SOTU:

"No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam -- the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death. Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder -- and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously... By allowing radical Islam to work its will -- by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself -- we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals, or even in our own courage."

Why did President Bush retreat from the obvious? Who imposed upon him, employing what logic, to depart from his past clear and accurate statements on the nature of Islamic-based terrorism and extremism?

On Sunday, Walid Phares suggested (or hoped) that the President would "Define the enemy, clearly and strategically. For the changes in definitions over the past seven years have left the public in quest for a definitive knowledge about who are we fighting and why." I guess Walid - and the rest of us - will have to wait for the next State of the Union message.