Snipped from HuffingtonPost.com.

Finally! Someone who sees how they define things as just as important as what you do about them. When we defined our action against the dangers of terrorism as a “war on … “, we made our first major mistake. There is no war to be made.

Terrorism is a police matter, not a military matter. By waging a war on it, we just strengthen the very inflammatory rationale that causes terrorism. I am just hoping the Obama and his administration will treat it more along the lines of an epidemiological problem.

Terrorism can be viewed as a societal disease or pathology cause by an agent (essentially a symptom of suffering, marginalization). This agent is what we need to prevent, treat, define … and until we treat the agent that causes terrorism, we will continue to watch it grow.

Here is a small portion of the article:

The thinking has evolved, he said, to focus on avoiding the kind of rhetoric “which could imply that this was a struggle against a religion or a culture.”

Obama has made it clear in his first days in office that he is courting the Muslim community and making what is at least a symbolic shift away from the previous administration’s often more combative tone.

He chose an Arab network for his first televised interview, declaring that “Americans are not your enemy.” Before his first full week in office ended, he named former Sen. George J. Mitchell as his special envoy for the Middle East and sent him to the region for talks with leaders.

According to the White House, Obama is intent on repairing America’s image in the eyes of the Islamic world and addressing issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unrest in Pakistan and India, Arab-Israeli peace talks and tensions with Iran.

Using language is one way to help effect that change, said Wayne Fields, professor of English and American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

“One of the contrasts between the two administrations is the care with which Obama uses language. He thinks about the subtle implications,” said Fields, an expert on presidential rhetoric. The Bush administration “didn’t set out deliberately to do things that were offensive but they liked to do things that showed how strong they were, and to use language almost in an aggressive sense.”

Read Full Article Here!