It's Not War, So Stop Saying That
President Barack Obama, center, with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), left, and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington,
Sept. 3, 2013. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)
It's Not War, So Stop Saying That
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 05 September 2013
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
- Hunter S. Thompson
John Boehner and Eric Cantor think attacking Syria is a great idea, and have encouraged all congressional Republicans to support President Obama in the upcoming vote to authorize such an action, though they don't intend to actually whip votes or anything. John McCain was for attacking Syria, but against it, yet for it, but refused to vote for it unless his amendment making the resolution more fulsomely war-ish was added to the final text. Sheldon Adelson, the right-wing billionaire who spent $70 million trying to defeat Obama in the 2012 election, is firmly in the president's corner when it comes to saving Syrian civilians by dropping bombs on them.
Boehner, Cantor, Adelson and Obama: if someone showed you a picture of them playing golf together, you'd think it was Photoshopped, because it's just too deranged to be real. But there they are, all four of them, walking shoulder to shoulder towards the precipice of another Middle East conflict, with McCain as usual scurrying to keep up.
Secretary of State John Kerry made it abundantly clear during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that he is ready to ask someone to be the first to die for a mistake, and did so with a barrage of gibberish so vast that it bent the light in the hearing room.
He insisted with table-pounding vehemence that the president is not asking America to go to war by asking America to flip missiles and bombs into Syria, because it totally won't seem like war to us. No one bothered to ask what it will seem like to the people on the receiving end of our non-war armaments. It won't be like war, though, so stop saying that.
The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18609-its-not-war-so-stop-saying-that
(h/t to Bob Boudelang, wherever you are)
= new reply since forum marked as read
"It's not a war if we don't suffer" Of course, this is exactly the same attitude that this Administration has towards the Drone attacks.
Last edited Thu Sep 5, 2013, 11:47 AM - Edit history (1)
But she did look lovely at the SF Opera opening the other night.
Well at least in the beginning....
what's so hard about that?
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Between Obama, Kerry and the rest of the war boosters I'm starting to think there's a bit of gap there between our objective realities. What we sometimes called "bizzarro world" during the Bush administration.
I had to turn the TV several times while watching liberal Democrats spout the most dishonest, nauseating lies I have perhaps ever heard. 
Like the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, this is an ugly wake-up call for me. 
Just kidding, sheesh. 
