This Orwellian Irony a la Alice's Rabbit Hole brings to mind Alice's Restaurant!
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New War Rationale: ‘Protect Civilians’
August 27, 2011 =
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/27/new-war-rationale-protect-civilians/Exclusive: The United Nations Security Council authorized NATO’s air campaign in Libya “to protect civilians.” But that rationale has been stretched by President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders to justify a war for “regime change” that actually is putting civilian lives in danger, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The world has grown accustomed to the euphemism “collateral damage” to deaden human outrage over the killing of civilians. It is a phrase deployed when a big power or one of its friends gets a little trigger-happy while going after some “bad guy.”
Such civilian deaths are deemed regrettable, perhaps worthy of a half-hearted apology, but nothing that merits a special tribunal to prosecute the noble officials responsible for the “mistake.” Of course, the same international audience is supposed to get angry when some “rogue” state or group kills civilians in pursuit of its military goals. Then, a tribunal is called for.
But the war in Libya has brought into prominence a parallel euphemism that justifies not only accidental killings but the military conflicts that guarantee such deaths. The new rationale for war is “to protect civilians,” an Orwellian twist that NATO and the Obama administration adopted in March to justify an air-and-ground war to achieve regime change in Libya.
Naturally, the NATO powers repeatedly denied that “regime change” was their goal, although their war planes and intelligence agencies have coordinated military operations with Libyan rebels whose stated goal has been to eliminate longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, .............
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