So glad we’ve won that then.
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Perfect. We’re going to do like McGovern wanted to do with Vietnam: declare victory and go home.
The War on Terror ends as the War on Healthcare begins.
If we’re now only at war with al Queda, where does that leave other terrorist groups? And if we are at war with al queda, I mean really at war, the sort of war you need to get picky about your terminology for, then does this mean we will really prosecute it as a war? Send troops wherever they may be? Doubt it. Sure, we’ll send troops some places, the same places we would have sent them in our War on Terror most likely.
Yes, “War on Terror” is linguistically problematic, but as an umbrella term to define a shifting shadowy enemy, it was perfectly servicable. Everybody knew what we meant. The complaints about this terminology are academic and petty, not reflective of the needs of the real world.
“Winning” is an artifact of an outmoded patriarchal way of thinking dominated by a kyriarchical commitment to power-over politics.
We’re achieving a positive transformation of the conflict space.
And even that’s a bit suspicious, what with the whole implicit fascist hegemony behind normative valuations like “positive”!
Obama et al have reached a new height in poli-sci babble. Absolutely ludicrous! I guess the “know it when they see it” sort of attitude seems to work for them. It’s also easier to back down, change your mind when you don’t ever really say what it is that you’re doing/going to do.
Didn’t you see that they’re going away from the “Two wars” theory?
They’re too busy with the War on (Some) Voters to be interested in the War on (Some) Terror.
They are moving on to a new and important war againt the US taxpayer.
Yeah, this is another instance where St. Barry gets to vote ‘present’ and move on.
I was about to post that I sort of agree with the imprecision of the phrase “War on Terror,” and would like to see it replaced by something that more concretely defines our enemies, but I think tim macguire’s post is more correct than mine would have been.
As for the idea that “jihadist” and “global war” are now verboten…I can only assume that this administration has its collective head buried in the sand (or shoved up their…).
And we’ve got three-and-a-half more years of this sh*t?
Can we just start the civil war now, and get it out of the way, so we can move on with our lives?
Oh, and what’s with the new “terms of agreement”? PJM going all corporate on us? Wait, no. That happened a couple of years ago. What gives?
I triple dirty dog double dare you Obama…
Come on you Orwellian double ungood a-hole
say it SAAAAAAYYYY IIIITTTTTTTT….
Mission Accomplished!!
You KNOW you want to. I quadruple dirty dog double dare you…. you cowards..
oh yeah just noticed those terms… sorry for the a-hole bomb. hope I didn’t cross a line there.
So, has anyone told Hezbollah about this? Seems that someone ought to. And if we can’t call them Jihadis, what do we call them? Splodeydopes is just so uncouth, it would probably give the Harvard educated the vapors. Persons of explosion? Gentlemen of disintegration? I’m getting a headache.
Exactly right, Peter.
We can call off the war on terror all we want. The problem is the slimebag terrorists also get to decide whether or not they’re still at war with us.
My guess is they haven’t given up trying to incinerate us just yet.
Thanks Mike. Now I feel bad that I was insulting to people who object to the term. I didn’t mean people who have intellectually honest concerns, I mean those other people.
Not you, you’re great. It’s them, they’re the problem. See?
A public relations effort to not sound as if we’re doing what we’re doing in an indiscriminate way will probably have very little effect. I don’t care if it’s a War on Terror, War on Islamism, War on Radical Islamism, War on Radical Islamism Most Focused on Al Qaeda, or a War on Those Emeffers Who Deserve All That War with Us Will Bring, or whatever it gets called as long as it is fought.
This surprises you, Steve? You expected a “victory”?
Didn’t someone declare Mission Accomplished a few years ago?
http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/cheneys-mission-accomplished.html
Hey, I agree with Jon! I hope this will not cause him to reconsider. #2 is what we oughta do, #4 is the most accurate, but I’d not say no to #5.
Janus, anyone stone dumb enough to quote Juan Cole around here will get the ridicule they deserve. That’s about as amusing as citing Glenn “sock puppet” Greenwald.
Cole’s article contains many claims and few facts. I don’t doubt it’s red meat for the more dogmatic anti-war types, since they don’t need facts, as they know The Truth.
Juan Cole’s brief article has links sourcing every claim.
In order to reject them, you’d have to believe that news media world wide have conspired with him.
And Glenn Greenwald.
This is far more effort than Juan Cole or any proponent of his deserves, but I read as far as about two paragraphs and came up with this rock-solid source:
“it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible.”
So we have a seeming, on top of an expectation, on the part of the general “you,” based on the utterly unjustified selection of the year 2000, that amounts to a plausibility. What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t forget Ellers McEllerson.
In context, “It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.”
Did you mean do disagree?
Alternately, the Bush banner said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED so we have won; nothing else matters.
And, dare I ask… Ellers who?
Well, Janus, what was the mission that ship was sent to accomplish? Did they accomplish it?
And, by the way, did the Bush team arrange to have it put there, or is it a bit of rah rah that carriers post when returning home from a mission? Do you even know?
The Lancet study has been completely discredited, and that is the high point of Cole’s quote. It’s actually pretty straight forward math that the invasion saved lives. I disagree that that is the proper metric, but if you insist on using it, you still lose the argument.
tim:
“Well, Janus, what was the mission that ship was sent to accomplish? Did they accomplish it?”
Yes, if the mission was to establish torture as US policy, and get thousands of our troops killed, tens of thousands of our troops crippled, brain damaged, blinded, or otherwise maimed, get hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims killed, and earn the lasting hatred of all their surviving families and friends, etc.
“And, by the way, did the Bush team arrange to have it put there,”
Yes.
“or is it a bit of rah rah that carriers post when returning home from a mission?”
No
“Do you even know?”
Obviously I do, and obviously you didn’t even google to find out.
“The Lancet study has been completely discredited,”
Wrong; if you even believed that, you’d have posted a link to a credible source for your claim.
“and that is the high point of Cole’s quote. It’s actually pretty straight forward math that the invasion saved lives.”
Wrong; if you even believed that, you’d have supplied a link to a credible source for your statement.
“I disagree that that is the proper metric, but if you insist on using it, you still lose the argument.”
So, you have already prepared to ignore learning you’re wrong; that saves me the effort of linking or…
Bye.