Different points of Q

The big news this morning was the death of Iraq's al-Qaidi leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqaqawi. (Who doesn't look half bad for a man slayed by 500 pound bomb.)

President Bush called it "a severe blow to al-Qaida" and "a significant victory in the war on terror. "

The Iraqi chapter of al-Qaida, issued this statement, "We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

I just received a birth announcement that read almost exactly the same way. For every season...

Whether this will improve the situation in Iraq remains to be seen -- although killing a terrorist leader is usually preferable to not killing a terrorist leader. But, as I write this, I realize before we make any significant progress in our relations with the Muslim world we need to reach some kind of consensus on the letter Q.

I was taught that a "Q" was to be followed by a "U.".* But so far, in this short post, I have an "Iraqi," an "Al Qaidi," and a "Zarqawi" -- lot's of Q's and not an U in sight.

I'm not sure what we should do about this. I'm not going as far as to support further military action, but accommodating their language like this is obviously not doing anyone any good.

Come to think of it, I would like to see Americans and American news organizations start referring to the people who live in Iraq as "Iraqus" and the terrorist organization that attacked us on 9/11 as "Al Quidi."

It's not like we still call Germany "Deutschland " and Japan "Nippon." If we did, we'd probably still be getting our troops blown up in the streets of Berlin and Tokyo.

Just a modest proposal from a modest blogger, who wants to do his part for the war on terror.


*For you scrabble players out there, there are 21 English words where the q isn't followed with a u. They are: qat, qaid, qats, qoph, faqir, qaids, qanat, quphs, tranq, faqirs, qanats, qindar, qintar, qwerty, sheqel, tranqs, qindars, qwertys, qindarka, and sheqalim. Never heard of any of them? Me neither. Frankly, a lot of them sound made up.