Al-Qaeda As Catch-All Term
by tristero
Glenn Greenwald rightly takes Kenneth Pollack to task for this idiocy from the NY Times:Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain's portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a "perfectly reasonable catchall phrase" that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that "does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing," said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
What Glenn doesn't realize is something that Pollack surely knows, which is that Philip Bobbitt is trying to make the catch-all "al Qaeda" academically acceptable as well. From a review of Bobbitt's latest:Bobbitt’s central premise is that today’s Islamic terrorist network, which he calls Al Qaeda for short...