The puerile fantasy of regime change

Finally, the era of regime change is over

There's changing the ISIS regime.
(Image credit: (Jean Marmeisse/Corbis))

When it comes to the Islamic State, the inconsistency of our naming conventions seems a trivial matter relative to the extremist group's fearsome brutality. But our words still matter.

President Obama insists on calling it ISIL; most of the rest of us call it ISIS. But the real source of our careful terminological choices is hiding in plain sight. Not only are some of us, like the president, keen to downplay the Islamic identity of the Islamic State. All of us, when you think about it, are pretty uncomfortable with the admission that the Islamic thing in question is a state at all.

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James Poulos

James Poulos is a contributing editor at National Affairs and the author of The Art of Being Free, out January 17 from St. Martin's Press. He has written on freedom and the politics of the future for publications ranging from The Federalist to Foreign Policy and from Good to Vice. He fronts the band Night Years in Los Angeles, where he lives with his son.