Al-dawla al-islamiya fi al-iraq wa al-sham. There you have it. This is the full name (in arabic) of the group that is currently terrorizing large swaths of Iraq and Syria by using inhuman terror techniques more familiar to the middle ages. They also have a significant number of the citizens of the civilized world shaking in their boots and shaking their fists clamoring for retribution and then destruction.
As I previously opined in a piece about the former dictator of Libya, Muammar Khadaffi, it’s nigh well impossible to focus on an enemy if you can’t agree on a name for the evil. Let’s see, Obama and his crowd insist on referring to them by the acronym ISIL which stands for The Islamic Sate in Iraq and the Levant, and there’s some support for that naming convention in that the arabic “al-sham” evidently most correctly translates to “The Levant”. The fourth estate, at least in the western world, insist on using ISIS or The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and there is also some logic to this as they are doing most of their current damage in Iraq and hide out in Syria. One hold-out of the pen and ink crowd is the Associated Press which eschews any high fallutin’ name as giving them too much credit for the sicko, killer, creeps they are and merely refers to them as “Islamic militants”. I rather like that terminology, but I would substitute terrorists for militants; unfortunately, in retrospect, “Islamic terrorists” is already pretty overworked. They themselves, likely after having consulted with a good public relations outfit somewhere in The Levant, have been referring to themselves in their tweets and blog posts simply as The Islamic State. You can probably see why.
After several hours of frustrating research, I determined that if we were going to have these guys as public enemy number one, I would have to take it on myself to straighten this naming mess out, because I want to get rid of these murdering bas*@#ds.
I’ve ruled out the Obama construction of ISIL for many reasons, not the least of which is that no one, and I mean no one, knows who or what or where The Levant is. One possible meaning of levant is that it is the present participle of the french irregular verb lever to rise. Translated to the King’s english it would mean “rising” or if you added the article “le” to it-the rising. Nah. I don’t think that’s it. Our government types don’t learn French anymore. If it’s referring to a place, well, it’s a poor choice because almost no one knows where it is, and if they think they know they’re wrong. One, usually impeccable source identifies it as “the eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt”. I know the Med, but Littoral and Anatolia goes for naught. This definition goes on to say that “it includes Cyprus, Israel, Palestine and Aleppo Vilaytel”. See what I mean. Cyprus for chris sakes. I dug deeper. Another usually definitive source said that it is an area, “bounded by the Taurus Mountains to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the West, the northern Arabian desert to the South and Upper Mesopotemia to the east. Does that help? Ever been to the Four Seasons Mesopotemia. Of course not. ISIL is another case of the Obamaites being too particular about the facts, getting caught up in the details of things, and missing the big picture. Many of the pundit class say they use it because it implies that the threat goes beyond Iraq and Syria. I agree with that, but it gets a little fuzzy when you throw in Upper Mesopotemia.
ISIS won’t work because it’s just too confusing. First of all Isis, as you all know, is the name of the Egyptian goddess who is the offspring of Nut, the Goddess of the Sky and Geb the God of the Earth who then married her own brother Osiris. This Eqyptian god and goddess stuff get pretty kinky. So you can see why CNN and the New York Times have made a really big mistake insisting on using ISIS to refer to this particular group of murdering thugs. In addition Isis is also a perfectly good, and fairly common name of certain of the fairer sex including one Isis Martinez of Miami who has started an on-line campaign to keep the news media from corrupting an old and honorable name.
I would never go for The Islamic State as the bad guys would really prefer if only because that’s what, after consulting with some PR types, they seem to prefer. Seems to me we have plenty of Islamic States already, that is, those sovereign states which have adopted a theocratic basis for their governance. Even most of this crowd are, apparently, joining up with us to get in on the destruction of these pretenders to Islam who murder indiscriminately any who gets in their way.
That leaves us, then, with only the AP appellation of Islamic militants, but that just doesn’t get it for me. It’s overly broad, overly used and doesn’t convey the heinous nature of what they do and how they are doing it. I’m open to suggestions, but in the interim, I propose, PIMIPIS&OPifWLT. It’s a little long and unwieldy, but I think it says it all. Perverted Islamic Murderers of Innocent Peoples in Iraq and Syria and Other Places if We Let Them.
I’m still open to suggestions.
