Idiotic Phrase IV and V

It's been a very slow news week, so, continuing with a series I started not too long ago, I comment on two more idiotic phrases.

Idiotic Phrase IV – “home-grown terrorist”

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this but this phrase is almost universally used by yellow journalists (who probably have accused President Bush of hyping the war against terrorist, by the way) to sensationalize an already terrifying story.

Yellow journalists use the phrase to describe a national who commits, or was about to commit (in the case of great anti-terrorism work by anti-terrorism forces that have been given the tools to fight terrorists), an act of terror against her/his own birth-country. It was most recently used to describe the German terrorists arrested late this summer.

Well, when I hear “home-grown”, I think “indoctrinated at an early age maybe even since birth”. And this is precisely what the yellow journalists want me and everyone else to think. Except, this is not the case. So far, I don’t know that any “home-grown” terrorist was born, lived a short life of indoctrination, and who, then, decided to commit an act of terror. Rather, an otherwise non-radical individual has converted to a particular religious belief and shortly thereafter decides he wants to murder innocents in his birth country. This does not represent a “home-grown terrorist” to me.

I’d love to hear the argument to justify the phrase even if from Hillary's advocate.

Idiotic Phrase V – “lack of political reconciliation”

al Fedaban-Americans now repeat, ad nauseam, that the “lack of political reconciliation” in Iraq is the reason we should surrender to the terrorists. I should say it’s today’s reason, when it no longer suits them, they’ll find another reason.

The idiot trying to impress in your next conversation on Iraq will be the first person that says “lack of political reconciliation”.