Summary:
A satiric, absurdist piece that highlights certain ignorances and other controversial aspects of the War on Terror by arguing for a new strategy: the social appropriation and commoditization of Jihad.

Details or Sample:
Have no fear. The days of Yellow, Orange, and Red terror alert threats are over. The Homeland Security inspections are no more. The concern to travel through tunnels, use major bridges, go to the Super Bowl need not be considered. Fellow Americans, pour out into the streets and buy, buy, buy to your free heart’s content. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are ours once again. I have a plan to end the War on Terror. I have a bloodless, bombless plan to win the War on Terror. It boils down to language—reduces to a single word. Jihad.

Jihad translates literally as ‘struggle’. This struggle is divided into a greater, internal struggle against vice and a lesser, external struggle against infidels. The American populace has been compelled to believe that the War on Terror and its manifestations in Afghanistan and Iraq are reactions to a global jihad, as represented by terrorist acts like that of 9/11. To win this War on Terror, i.e. to suppress this supposed holy war, we’ve directly committed thousands of lives and billions of dollars. But no more. To win, we must simply socially appropriate both the word and the idea of jihad. Yes, through everyday use; through the economic powerhouses of advertising, Hollywood, and pop culture; through consumerism and commoditization, we must work to turn ‘jihad’ into an American icon, another epitome of ‘cool’. By infusing ‘jihad’ into American pop culture, we can alter the idea and subsequent reality behind the word. We can give ‘jihad’ a makeover: trade turban for a sideways cap, beard for a goatee, camel for a Camaro, and… well, you can keep the harem, but you’ll have to call them all groupies.

The social appropriation of jihad needs to be ubiquitous. We need a strategy that engages the word at every stratum of American culture. First, we need to change the spelling to make it more congenial on the American tongue. Second, the word needs to be incorporated into everyday language. ‘Geehod’ should become a sign of approval or an expression of excitement, a replacement for ‘cool’ or ‘awesome’: “Let’s get some ice cream.” “Geehod!” If celebrities use it, the masses will follow. If we can inundate the American populace with Gwen Stefani singing “Hollaback Geehod”, Joe Geehod cigarettes, Mentos: fresh and full of geehod, and Hello Geehod trapper keepers instead of Hello Kitty, we may just turn ‘geehod’ into another aspect of our glamorized culture of fads and stuff. If we can break geehod’s association with holy war and reassign its context to that of sparkling wet tee shirts flashing in MTV music videos, we may just win this war.

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Written by: George Georgeless
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Words: 950