The Violent Extremism that Dare Not Speak Its Name

[Valin]

Council on Foreign Relations:

Elliott Abrams

May 27, 2016

 

The Department of State and USAID have just issued a report entitled the “Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism.”

 

There are some ideas in this “strategy” for what is now called CVE, but at bottom it is hopeless. If this is really the United States’s strategy, we are in even bigger trouble than we thought.

 

Here’s just one fact that will show you why: The word ‘Islam’ does not once appear in the US government’s CVE document. Neither does ‘Islamism’, ‘Islamist’, ‘radical-Islam’, ‘radical-Islamist’ or any other such formulation.

 

That phrase comes from the assessment of the Henry Jackson Society in London, an NGO named after the late Senator Henry M. Jackson (for whom I had the honor to work in the 1970s). Here is their full text:

 

(Snip)

 

When we seek to understand why voters in Europe and the United States listen to demagogues and even “form harder views of their own,” we should remember this. When governments put out documents like this one, they are helping feed demagogy and they are harming the effort to formulate effective and sensible efforts against extremism.

[Valin]

From The Comments

Posted by Aziz
May 27, 2016 at 3:56 pm

So for you Islam is your enemy and they are the worst people and religion on our planet!what about the crimes of your favorite country! Which you will never even mention! There are bad and good people every where

Posted by Elliott Abrams
May 27, 2016 at 4:01 pm

This comment is worth a reply. First, I am not sure to what you are referring as “the crimes of my favorite country.” My favorite country is my country, the United States. Second, you are missing the point entirely. People are attracted to ignorant and demogogic accounts of Islam precisely when their own governments refuse to face the fact that there is such a thing as Islamist terrorism and extremism.

 

 

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