Jeffrey Herf, in The New Republic, arguing, among other things, that the Obama Administration should call America's adversaries by their proper names:
...During both World War II and the cold war, the United States derived great strategic value from naming its adversaries and publicly discussing and denouncing their ideologies. It fought wars of ideas that accompanied the force of arms. We need to understand the importance of doing that today as well.
One way to accomplish this would be to apply the term "war crime" to the intentional murder of civilians, including Muslims. Suicide bombings or remotely controlled bombings whose purpose is first and foremost to kill civilians are war crimes. Their perpetrators are war criminals. The attacks of September 11 and those in London, Madrid, and Israel were war crimes. So, too, are the hundreds of attacks directed against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. We should remind world public opinion that a majority of Islamist attacks on civilians have been aimed at Muslims, often denounced as "infidels" and "unbelievers." The United States should publish and prominently feature the number and identities of Muslims who have been murdered by the Islamists. Either the International Criminal Court in the Hague or American military tribunals should try those who commit these attacks as war criminals. What stronger signal of "engagement" could the United States send than one that expresses our determination to give due weight to specifically Muslim victims of Islamist terror?
Likewise, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be indicted for incitement to genocide. His public statements are violations of Article Three of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
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