{"id":1465,"date":"2009-11-19T20:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-19T20:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/19\/heres-what-you-call-a-terrorist"},"modified":"2009-11-19T20:37:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-19T20:37:00","slug":"heres-what-you-call-a-terrorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1465","title":{"rendered":"Here’s what you call a terrorist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I was talking to Rep. Mac Thornberry the other day about the decision to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in New York City on charges that he masterminded the 9\/11 attacks on the United States.<\/p>\n

The Clarendon Republican lawmaker then threw me a bit of a curve. He referred to Muhammad as “KSM.”<\/p>\n

Since that conversation, I’ve heard other officials and even a few commentators use the term.<\/p>\n

I don’t get the initials being used to refer to this guy. Customarily, we Americans refer to folks in such a manner who have a considerably higher standing than a man who reportedly has confessed to killing thousands of innocent people. You know who I’m talking about: JFK, LBJ, FDR, TR, RFK. These are presidents or, in RFK’s case, someone who was running for the office. They’re generally iconic political figures. We often use nicknames — some flattering, some not — such as Honest Abe, Tricky Dick, Condi, Ronnie, Dubya, Goodhair, Ike, or Give ‘Em Hell Harry while referring to our leaders.<\/p>\n

But I truly prefer to save the initials and informal monickers either for American leaders or public figures, or those for whom we have something other than utter loathing and contempt.<\/p>\n\n

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I was talking to Rep. Mac Thornberry the other day about the decision to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in New York City on charges that he masterminded the 9\/11 attacks on the United States. The Clarendon Republican lawmaker then threw me a bit of a curve. He referred to Muhammad as “KSM.” Since that conversation, … Continue reading Here’s what you call a terrorist<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}