MAYBE WE WERE WRONG - AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  We've said that Mr. Obama doesn't have any real foreign policy triumphs to his credit.  Maybe we overstated it.  Joe Queenan, in The Wall Street Journal, notes that the administration's scrapping of offensive, culturally hurtful terms like "war on terror" is having its results.  For example, the Taliban is responding with its own changes:

A Taliban spokesman reached in Pakistan said that the new phrasing was being implemented as a way of eliminating the negative associations triggered by more graphic terminology. "The term 'beheading' has a quasi-medieval undertone that we're trying to get away from," he explained. "The term 'cephalic attrition' brings the Taliban into the 21st century. It's not that we disapprove of beheadings; it's just that the word no longer meshes with the zeitgeist of the era. This is the same reason we have replaced the term 'jihad' with 'booka-bonga-bippo,' which has a more zesty, urban, youthful, 'now' feel. When you're recruiting teenagers to your movement, you don't want them to feel that going on jihad won't leave any time for youthful hijinks."

COMMENT:  That Obama magic.  We knew it would work.  The rest of Queenan's column is just as illuminating. 

April 16, 2009