Moves afoot to change 'war' definition

[babylonsister]

Just...ugh. If it walks like a duck...

http://www.examiner.com/a-714092~_War__may_not_be_the_right_term__many_say.html?cid=rss-Washington_DC


Moves afoot to change 'war' definition

May 7, 2007 8:34 AM (44 mins ago)
by Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner


WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Momentum is building among even President Bush’s most loyal allies to change the name of the war the United States has fought for more than five years. One Republican said use of the term “war” elevates mass murderers to the status of a standing army.

snip//

John Brennan, a former senior CIA officer who directed the U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center, also believes the word “war” should be dropped.

Brennan said the term connotes only military force that is required defeat radical Islam, when in fact a lot of tools, including public relations and diplomacy, are needed. (diplomacy? :wtf: )


more...

[Xipe Totec]

1. I prefer the original name: "G. Dubya Two"

For Gulf War II

[NNN0LHI]

2. Whatever happened to "Operation Iraqi Liberation" or OIL for short? n/t

[Toots]

3. Five years later they are figuring this out?

Is ignorance a prerequisite for government office?

[Raven]

4. Maybe we should call it "King George's Sandbox" n/t

[MrModerate]

5. However . . . if there's some formal redefinition of "war" . . .

Doesn't that affect Schimpanski's authorization to use same, granted by the Congress in 2002?

This could be a genuinely positive development, leading to a reality-based method of dealing with the problem (while still hanging the albatross of failure around the necks of the most guilty).

[Dhalgren]

6. Of course they want the term "war" dropped.

The next President will likely be a Democrat - and they don't want a Democrat to be a "War President". Now that Caligula is on the way out, this whole CIC/War President thing is no longer needed. Once the Democrats are back in the WH, it's back to business as usual. War? What war?

[JHB]

7. Operation: Iraqi Reef

"Only W could run the ship agound in a desert"

[Double T]

8. 'bush dynasty conflict II'

[jsamuel]

9. This is what can happen when a major Presidential candidate speaks out.

Thanks John Edwards.

However, I am sure they have other motives.

[SpiralHawk]

10. Call is what is is: CRUSADE for republicon oil & munitions profits

eom

[dave_p]

11. Neo-conflict

I can see the ads:

Tired of your old war? Then try Neo-conflict! It's new!

Neo-conflict! It's the new name for war!

[Donnachaidh]

12. the Dems should call it what it really is -- OCCUPATION

It's NOT a war. We're OCCUPYING another country.

It's all about EMPIRE. :grr:

[liberal N proud]

13. Call it what it is, an Invasion

The United States for the first time in history invaded a sovereign nation without provocation.

[happyslug]

14. The Marketeers are at it again, "Re-brand" the war to make it more popular

Clausewitz defined war "As the use of Force to force someone to do out will". Now he did this after several pages of thought as to what was "War", but he said it was a poor definition, but the only one he could come up with that takes in ALL the different types of war (including raids, blockades, the THREAT of other actions etc.). He even mention the horrors of war (death and destruction) but then while acknowledging such horrors, point out some military actions, minimized such horrors while other maximize them. Thus Vietnam was a "War", our embargo of Cuba is a "War" Vietnam and Korea were "Wars", what the US did in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s was "War" (as is what the US is doing in Columbia and Iraq today).

The problem is this War is unpopular, It is a "War" but something has to be done to make it more popular. Marketeers when facing such a problem on a consumer product try to "re-brand" such bad products by giving it a new image. Sometimes this requires a new name and packaging, thus the search for a "Czar" for the "War" and now this attempt to re-brand Iraq into something new. The term "Police Action" would be they first choice, but that term was used in Vietnam. The term has to be that shows the US is still trying to achieve its aims through the use of Force, but avoid the use of the term "War" or any term with "negative" connotations like "Force". Liberation is a another term to be avoid given its use in the first weeks of the war in the form of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" Which reduced to abbreviations become O.I.L. The war then became "Operation Iraqi Freedom". "Operation" is another term they want to avoid for it si to militaristic given its use in Desert Strom and other military operations.

Thus the search for a new name, to make the war in Iraq sound better.

[Zywiec]

15. Iraq war has jumped the shark

Do we still need a "war" czar?

[Javaman]

16. In a dramatic shift in policy the prez* today announced that the

new term of our conflict in the middle east will now be called, "clusterfuck on terror".

A recent sound clip of mr. bush* speeking to a group of junior high school students in Ohio has been transcribed...

"no one likes a clusterfuck, I'm the first one to say that, but this clusterfuck will define your generation for future clusterfucks. The last clusterfuck we were in with Viet Nam, we learned some hard lessons but with this clusterfuck, we will apply the lessons learned and make sure that although this clusterfuck will be long and hard, it's to prevent future clusterfucks from happening. I will now take questions from the children and the gape mouthed teachers".

[conspirator]

17. Funny! I almost choked with laughter nt

[SteveM]

18. Name change may confound the push for "Unitary President"

The notion of a unitary president (one who can override the Constitution) both depends and feeds on a state of "war" to fulfill its legal rationale to run the country, top-to-bottom, by an authoritarian. (Domestic legal structures during a period of "war" are already based on the many-years-old hard-wiring of the War on Drugs.) So, if the GOPers and other pundits want to change the terms, then they will yank what little legal rationale remains for the "Unitary President." This the far right cannot abide. It will remain PermaWar.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. They're talking about the War on Terror, not the Iraq war.

And it never should have been called a war in the first place, for exactly the reason cited - it exalts bin Laden and his ilk to the status of warriors. They aren't warriors - they're criminals.

[lovuian]

20. Call it what they want but we are Losing

its so sad what they have done to our country

[Marnieworld]

21. I said this in sept 2001

Too bad only my husband and dog heard me. :eyes:

[TwilightGardener]

22. Al Qaeda-palooza.