Don’t Mention the War

obama-0828Bill Clinton was ambiguous about the definition of “sex” and “is.” Barack Obama is uncertain about what the definition of “war” might be.

And wars are central to the duties of the man in the White House.

Whether or not we’re in a war depends on who you ask and on which day of the week you ask him. Secretary of State John Kerry said that bombing ISIS in two countries wasn’t a war. After the White House spokesman said it is a war, Kerry agreed that maybe it might be a war after all.

Forget about finding a strategy, this administration can’t even agree on whether the thing that it needs to find a strategy for is a war.

Democrats don’t like the “W” word. They bomb more countries than Republicans do, but they find a prettier name for it.

One of the first things that Obama did in Iraq was to change the name of the war. It was no longer Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was now Operation New Dawn. Even though there were 50,000 troops in Iraq, the combat mission was officially over. The 50,000 were renamed “Advise and Assist” brigades.

As John and Yoko said, the “W” word really could be over if you wanted it to be. Or pretended it was.

Obama bombed Libya to implement regime change, but no one called it a war. It was just one of those things where we dropped a lot of bombs on another country in coordination with rebels on the ground to help them take over that country. Definitely not a war. Possibly one of those “man-caused disasters.”

At least that was how Obama Inc. tried to rename terrorism in the early heady days of hope and change.

A compulsive need to avoid calling things what they are is an obvious form of denial. But when a politician at the head of a government begins behaving in that shifty way, it’s also deeply dishonest.

Democrats could defend Bill Clinton’s need to lie about what they termed his private life, but even they can’t defend an administration that plays Clintonesque word games with something as big as a war.

We are currently not in a war with the Islamic State, which according to this administration is neither Islamic nor a State, with a strategy of possibly destroying them (unless that doesn’t work out and then we’ll settle for degrading them) and we are backed in this non-war by a coalition of Muslim nations that can’t as of yet be named, but which have possibly pledged to help us with certain undetermined things.

These undetermined things include aiding the Syrian Islamist rebels, some of whom are fighting alongside ISIS, some of whom are fighting ISIS and some of whom switch back and forth based on their mood, the latest shipment of TOW missiles from the CIA and how much the Saudis are paying them.

We don’t know a lot more about the war, which may or may not be a war, than we know about it.

And that’s the problem.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was mocked for talking about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” by people who are too stupid to realize that their ignorance has turned the world around them into “unknown unknowns.”

Obama’s culture of denial, his charm bracelets of Orwellian synonyms for conflict that seem to have been invented by a bureaucrat with no sense of humor, turn everything into unknown unknowns. If we can’t even properly define what we’re doing, how can we do it at all? If we can’t even admit that we’re fighting a war and that ISIS is inspired by Islam, how can we beat an enemy that we can’t fight or name?

For the longest time this administration refused to admit that ISIS was a threat or that it was at war with us. Only when the Jihadists were preparing to knock on the doors of the US embassy in Baghdad, was it finally able, after a delay of some weeks, to use the “W” word.

What you call something is important. Ideologues, like the kind that fill the ranks of Obama Inc, think that changing a name changes reality. It doesn’t. A rose will still be the same plant by any other name and ISIS will still be the same band of Islamic headchoppers even if you insist on referring to them as a junior varsity team of man-caused disasters belonging to no particular faith or religion.

It’s your awareness of reality that changes.

Casinos and credit card companies use substitution to diminish your awareness that you are spending money.  Drug companies play soothing music and show pastoral scenes while telling you the lethal side effects. Car salesmen and cable companies avoid giving you the full amount that you’ll be paying.

Obama has a bad habit of using these same tactics. His administration tried to make the illegal war in Libya look good by refusing to call it a war and comparing the cost to the Iraq War using bogus figures. It tried to erase the existence of terrorism by refusing to use the word to describe terrorist attacks that were taking place, whether at Fort Hood or in Benghazi.

His tactics showed that he didn’t believe that the problem was terrorism, but the overreaction of Americans to terrorism. All he had to do whitewash every attack as an isolated incident that had nothing to do with Islamic terrorism and then Americans would cease to be aware of terrorism. If Iraq were to vanish from the evening news, no one would know that Al Qaeda there was getting bigger and bolder.

In the latest leaked private conversations printed in the New York Times, Obama whines and mopes, he blasts critics and denies that his policies have failed. Despite his muscular rhetoric in public, in private he complains that he is being stampeded into bombing ISIS. It’s a revealing conversation because it shows a man who believes that his failures are not the problem. It’s other people becoming aware of those failures that concerns him and forces him into addressing them. ISIS isn’t the problem: America is.

ISIS is to Obama as Monica was to Bill Clinton. They’re both the dirty little secrets of powerful men that they did everything possible to hide. And once that was no longer an option, they quibbled over words.

Denial only works until reality forcibly intrudes. Even with a friendly media, the philandering of the President of the United States couldn’t continue indefinitely. And even with a friendly media, the rise of a new generation of Al Qaeda after the Arab Spring wouldn’t stay buried in the back pages forever.

It was only a matter of time until everyone knew.

Futile exercises like debating the meaning of “War” are delaying tactics. People are not interested in abstractions like the meaning of “Is,” “War,” “Sex” or “You can keep your doctor.” They take words at their common meaning. If bombs are falling, it’s a war. And if it’s a war, then it has to be won.

Democrats don’t believe in wars now because they don’t believe in winning. Instead of wars, they spend a lot of time on “interventions” as if dropping tons of explosives on a country is like telling your drunk cousin to stop drinking. They never win any of these interventions and that’s fine because Americans don’t really care what happens in Yugoslavia, Haiti or Somalia.

But on September 11, thousands were murdered in one day.  The Democrats don’t like calling what happened on that day an act of war. Americans however know it’s a war and are determined to win it.

Obama was guiding Americans away from the awareness that we were in a war. In wars, someone wins and someone loses. If he refused to call it a war, maybe we wouldn’t realize that we were losing.

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  • Yehuda Levi

    The Democrats got us into the Vietnam War – the first real war the US ever lost.

    And then they gave absolute military power to the community organizer from Chicago.

    No one should trust the Dems on foreign affairs or national defense. They are losers.

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    • JB Ziggy Zoggy

      America didn’t lose the Vietnam War, it quit. In 1973 a peace accord was signed by America, South Vietnam and North Vietnam, and America began full withdrawal. The Democrat controlled Congress reneged on its aid agreement with South Vietnam and in 1975 Saigon fell. In 1976 South Vietnam was gone.

      • pennant8

        Exactly right. We didn’t lose that war, we simply walked away from it, something we should have done years earlier.

        • Conniption Fitz

          Viet Nam was a dishonest political pseudo-war – just like what Obama is proposing.

    • vnamvet1969

      We didn’t lose Viet Nam, the government of the United States decided to quit. Not only did they pull out the troops, they decided not to supply the South with anything, and cut off all aid. Viet Nam proved the futility of trying to win a war by bombing, and every action was determined by Johnson and his Cabinet. When inexperienced politicians control every action by the commanding General, the product is failure. The Viet Nam War failed because it was the product of politicians playing soldier.
      I know, because I walked the jungle and rice paddies, as a light weapons infantryman. There were rules even out there that were passed down by fools. Democratic fools. If we had invaded the North with infantry, tanks, and air power it would have been over the first year. There would not have been nearly 60,000 dead boys. And why not? The North invaded the South the entire time. Because the politicians were afraid of the possibility that the war would expand to the further involvement of Russia and China. So then, why the hell did they send us there in the first place?

  • truebearing

    Narcissistic pathological liars share a curious similarity. They are outraged when people don’t believe them, though they are aware that they are lying. They get angry because they see the burden of proof that they are lying on those they are lying to. They have no ethical obligations.

    Obama is getting angry because his lies aren’t being protected by the media as much as he demands. He feels entitled to protection by the media. He thinks he can control what they report, but fails to recognize that the media just witnessed the beheading of two of their own. Those two American reporters could have been any one of them. He simply can’t understand self-interest when it isn’t his own.

    Obama’s level of narcissistic isolation and denial is dangerous. As far as Obama is concerned, the reality that three thousand Americans were killed by Muslim terrorists on 9/11 is to be suppressed until it is forgotten. It doesn’t serve his agenda any more than observances of the Holocaust serve the agendas of Nazis or Hamas.

    • Pete
      • truebearing

        How does that square with “necessity is the mother of invention?” I can’t see how Islam has ever been necessary, unless you’re looking at it from the perspective of psychopaths who need a religion that gives licence to commit evil.

        Maybe you should collect this and other gems from Americana and publish them. Market them to the Left as wisdom and to everyone else as comedy. Maybe get someone from ISIS to write the foreward. Make it multicultural.

  • Texas Patriot

    Slowly, slowly, slowly the ancient war machine of Islamic jihad is emerging from the melting glaciers of denial.

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    Daniel Greenfield knows well that all the Obamery (diverse wordplay) in the world won’t change the thoughts of the enemies of America. It is too bad the Republicans in power will not forcefully speak out against this charade of “policy”. Until Americans understand the extreme danger we are in and flood their Representatives with calls(like immigration), Obama will continue to assuage the people of this nation. Using the partisan leftist media in all its’ forms will be the undoing of this nation unless American people get angry and SPEAK OUT NOW !!!

  • Conniption Fitz

    “Woe to them that call good evil and evil good.” says the Bible.
    Worse to them that are so PC-blinded they can’t tell the difference between good and evil.

  • mtnhikerdude

    The Russians Military .not an army concerned with collateral damage , spent 8 years in Afghanistan and had to withdraw . Why in the world did America go in with the we will not shoot back until you kill ten of us strategy and think we could win?
    The French spent 14 years in Vietnam and withdrew because of the financial burden . No lesson learned we went in with the “Don’t shoot until you have been fired upon strategy”. Who makes these insane decisions ?

  • mtnhikerdude

    The real Neo Nazis are residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  • vnamvet1969

    We did not lose the Viet Nam War, the politicians decided to quit. When a war is being fought under the immediate guidance of inexperienced politicians, it will not succeed. If not for the fear of further involvement by China and Russia, by the politicians, invading the North could have ended the war in a year. The North invaded the South every single day.

    Instead, we have a black marble wall with the names of nearly 60,000 boys engraved on it. And I call them boys because I was there in 1969 and I was a boy. I ranged through the rice fields and jungle as a light weapons infantryman where even our actions were determined by the mood of Johnson and his Cabinet.

    The democrats decided to pull out and to even curtail all aid to the South. If they were afraid of China and Russia, why did they send troops in the first place? We did learn that bombing will not win a war by itself. And that generals should fight a war, not a bunch of knuckleheads safely entrenched in the White House. We are going to fail here for the same reason.

    • JB Ziggy Zoggy

      Yes, I worry about the advisors in Iraq. Who knows what type of dangerous stupidity Obama will force them into? The civilians screwed up the Vietnam war because they restrained the Generals, but Obama is even worse. I’m convinced he doesn’t want to win. He just wants political theater to placate the public so he doesn’t lose the Senate.

  • Debbie G

    Oldspeak: War
    Newspeak: Ungood peace.

  • ObamaYoMoma

    A compulsive need to avoid calling things what they are is an obvious form of denial. But when a politician at the head of a government begins behaving in that shifty way, it’s also deeply dishonest.

    When allegedly well informed writers do it too, it’s also deeply dishonest.

    • truebearing

      You mean like when compulsive commenters reduce everything to their one explanation for all things?

      • ObamaYoMoma

        Daniel is not just deficient in just one area. He is deficient in many areas. Indeed, like you he is not nearly as well informed as he believes himself to be.

  • truebearing

    “charm bracelets of Orwellian synonyms”

    That was a beauty. Certainly quotable.

  • CaptainCurmudgeon

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  • http://www.facebook.com/aemoreira81 aemoreira81

    Here, however, there may be the additional issue on if the true plan and endgame can really be delineated without offending everyone. One can probably safely presume that Obama’s endgame might be to get Assad out of the picture (but Obama, or any world leader for that matter, can’t say it because it would imply aiding and abetting ISIS to accomplish that mission). The means by which to do that will almost certainly be less than savory.

  • Craig Gorsuch

    I just want to know what the link is for the leaked Obama whine fest!

  • DaveGinOly

    I did but I think I got away with it.

  • Solo712

    One of the big problems in Syria no one talks about is that Obama owes Putin there, and sending planes there without Assad’s ok could have the Syrian dictator legally shoot them down and claim self-defence. Anyone noticed the cold shoulder that Poroshenko got in the White House ? I wonder if that’s another favour Obama needs from Putin in Syria.