Diplomats Are To Be Diplomatic?

Consul-at-Arms:

re: “New State Department lexicon forbids use of the words “jihad” or “jihadist”"

Has it really? He above, who might have been one of those who’d been passed the good word, says, urr, he hasn’t:

Rather than saying something like “while I can neither confirm nor deny,” let me say this: while I’ve seen this elsewhere in the blogosphere (and showing every sign of being circular reporting), I haven’t seen this in any official guidance from the State Dept.

Obviously, that State employee hasn’t gotten the memo, of which “Jihad Watch”, which is in possession of the “scoop”, tells us:

…I will publish more information on this when possible.

We look forward to it. Although, in the short term, some information, period, actually might have been nice. However, the concerns of that blogger are understandable, given the name of his blog.

So lacking an insider’s insider take, and unwilling to wait for the sequel, yours truly chose to undertake some time-consuming personal research into this matter, and can now publish this information:

In a search that took “0.28 seconds”, there were 1,590 mentions of “jihad” on the State web site as of April 25. Then, minutes later, yesterday:

. . . another search of the exact same word turned up an additional 60 mentions. It is hard to know what may be in a pipeline, of course. However, this blog is willing to go out on an informational limb and assert that if indeed already promulgated it doesn’t appear that the Secretary’s demand “absolutely forbidding the use” of the terms has made it ’round the official houses just yet.

Obviously, its use is not quite “forbidden”. It seems this is typically overheated web carrying on. For as another State employee notes:

…I looked around a bit and found that there is indeed official Department guidance [I emphasize "guidance," not a ban of any kind] for talking about terrorism with those pesky foreigners. What’s more, it says pretty much what Jihad Watch alleges: that officials should avoid using various terms that would have unintended effects, one of those terms is “Jihad,” and one of the unintended effects of using it would be to legitimize our enemies actions in the mind of our audience…

Essentially, they are to be thoughtful and careful.  Which is what diplomacy is about.  And which we had also thought blogging was about.  But never mind.