Ed Driscoll

By Ed Driscoll

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Smitty at Stacy McCain’s blog writes:

Oh, wait, a breaking terminology update:

a time-limited, scope-limited military action

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is the new Kinetic Military Action. TLSLMA. That’s Like Saying Lying Makes Amends.
In this particular kerfuffle, as with the Obama Administration as a whole, the lesson is “Never send an academic to do a job requiring leadership.”

Blogger and frequent Tim Blair commenter Paco adds:

The Orwellian euphemisms used by the current crowd would be amusing if the underlying idiocy were not so dangerous for the country. It’s enough to make me want to engage in a time-limited, scope-limited, kinetic transfer of foot energy to the seat of the trousers of whoever is responsible for this alarming proliferation of nonsense.

H.L. Mencken wrote something about the inauguration speech of Warren G. Harding that could be applied to 99% of everything uttered by Obama and his minions: “It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.”

I’ve gotten lots of mileage over the past few years out of Steven Den Beste’s quip that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning for the rest of us, but a user’s manual for the left. As “The Professor’s War,” grinds on, as Charles Krauthammer dubbed it, given their obsessions with postmodern linguistics, perhaps we could say the same thing about the postmodern Ruling Class’s tendency to adopt for their own the euphemistic allocations first on display in Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern’s Dr. Strangelove.

Elsewhere in the left’s time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military police action against clear language, David Harsanyi asks, “What does a guy have to do to be called a terrorist these days?”

I’d quote from that well-written piece, but, speaking of Orwellian, I’d really rather not risk running afoul of the boys at Righthaven.

Update: “Newly taciturn president decides maybe he should say something about Libya after all,” Allahpundit writes:

No, he’s not doing it in the Oval Office. Like I said last night, that’s reserved for wars, not “time-limited, scope-limited military actions.” The venue will be the National Defense University in Washington. “A professor’s war” indeed.

7:30 p.m. ET on Monday. Everything becomes clear.

Will AP, Reuters and the NYT even bother to listen, or will they write their praise for the speech now, Laphamizing even before the transcript is released from embargo?

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2 Comments, 2 Threads, 2 Trackbacks

  1. 1. bob sykes

    “Kinetic” actions are a standard part of military jargon and merely mean that people are moving around and shooting at each other. I don’t think there is a big deal here.

  2. 2. Paco

    Thanks for the link, Ed!

2 Trackbacks to “Then Let’s See How He Does, Up There, Without all the Assistance”