War/Not War?: Is John Kerry as Stupid as He Sounds? You Be the Judge

[CaseyJones]

http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/12/wa...s-stupid-as-he

Nick Gillespie

Via Instapundit comes a link to this stunning report from The Hill:

Secretary of State John Kerry wants you to know that whatever it is you call it when you drop bombs on people you want to kill, send troops and advisers to foreign lands to kill and train people, it isn't war.

"What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation," Kerry said. "It's going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it's a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts."

In a separate interview with CBS News, Kerry also rejected the word "war" to describe the U.S. effort and encouraged the public not to "get into war fever" over the conflict.

"We're engaged in a major counterterrorism operation, and it's going to be a long-term counterterrorism operation. I think war is the wrong terminology and analogy but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity," Kerry told the network.

"War is the wrong terminology and analogy?"

That's beyond sad—it's insulting to the intelligence of us all.

And, more important, it's the sort of doublespeak whose obfuscations pave the way to greater and greater involvement while pretending the exact opposite.

If what Obama says we're about to do in Iraq and Syria to ISIS isn't war, then why not send "boots on the ground," as former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden and a growing chorus of elected officials are calling for? Why did Obama argue last year that he needed congressional authorization to do the same thing to Syria?

Instapundit suggests that Kerry doesn't want to call it a war because we might lose it. I actually think it's because the administration is delusional and mistakes its ability to rename things via clever word games for material reality. Which is far more troubling than simple cowardice or deceit. Certainly nothing Kerry has said in his new gig argues that he has a robust sense of reality testing.

[VIDEODROME]

All that Borax leaked into his brain.

[Elias Graves]

Obama goes to war. (But it's not a war.)
Against the Islamic State. (But it's not Islamic and it isn't a state.)
To fight the terrorists. (Which, by the way, Obama "decimated" in 2012.)
Without authorization. (But he'll use the 2001 authorization which gave Bush authority to go after the perpetrators of 9/11. But, of course, those guys were "decimated" in 2012.)
He won't use the model of Iraq or Afghanistan. (Which were successful. Instead, he'll use Yemen and Somalia as models, where he has gone to war without authorization and has accomplished nothing.)
To "degrade and destroy" the bad guys. (Which he wanted to arm last year in his efforts to oust Assad.)
But he has no definition for victory. (Because Earnest didn't bring his dictionary.)
But he will bring his coalition along. (Of seven countries, who have all pledged to do absolutely nothing.)
Along with the international community. (Even though the UN has offered no support for the war that isn't a war.)

Got it? Please, do keep up here.

[Kords21]

When you have to try to make a justification why a duck that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, isn't a duck, you're describing a duck. The word games are amusing.

[acptulsa]

Obama goes to war. (But it's not a war.)
Against the Islamic State. (But it's not Islamic and it isn't a state.)
To fight the terrorists. (Which, by the way, Obama "decimated" in 2012.)
Without authorization. (But he'll use the 2001 authorization which gave Bush authority to go after the perpetrators of 9/11. But, of course, those guys were "decimated" in 2012.)
He won't use the model of Iraq or Afghanistan. (Which were successful. Instead, he'll use Yemen and Somalia as models, where he has gone to war without authorization and has accomplished nothing.)
To "degrade and destroy" the bad guys. (Which he wanted to arm last year in his efforts to oust Assad.)
But he has no definition for victory. (Because Earnest didn't bring his dictionary.)
But he will bring his coalition along. (Of seven countries, who have all pledged to do absolutely nothing.)
Along with the international community. (Even though the UN has offered no support for the war that isn't a war.)

Got it? Please, do keep up here.

Yes and no. I'd have a damned sight more of it if I hadn't had the foresight to don my waders. Even so, I'm in some danger here. They're only hip waders; this line of guff seems to call for a full diving suit with SCUBA tanks.

"What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation," Kerry said. "It's going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it's a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts."

This dismays me even more than the 'not a war, sort of a police action but not one of those either because we gave that term bad connotations too' garbage. So, brave soldiers, you are merely 'moving parts' in Kerry's Imperialism Machine. Does that warm yer little hearts?

[Lucille]

[Jackie Moon]

Wait... they changed their mind - now it is war:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...war-on-terror/

One day after denying the U.S. is engaged in “a war” against ISIS militants, the White House today said a war is in fact underway, indicating it’s an extension of the ongoing campaign against Islamic extremists.

“The United States is at war with ISIL in the same way we are at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today.

“Semantics matter,” he added.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby echoed that assessment: “This is not the Iraq War,” he said. “But make no mistake we know we are at war with ISIL in the same way we are at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.” The militant Islamic group goes by the acronym ISIL as well as ISIS and the name of Islamic State.

The new talking points follow a day of insistence by administration officials that President Obama’s new anti-ISIS strategy only amounts to a “counter-terrorism campaign.”

“No,” the U.S. is not at war with ISIS, Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC News Thursday in Saudi Arabia. “We’re engaged in a counter-terrorism operation of a significant order. And counter-terrorism operations can take a long time, they go on. I think ‘war’ is the wrong reference term with respect to that.”

National Security Adviser Susan Rice said since there would be no “boots on the ground” — presumably referring to American combat troops in Iraq or Syria — the campaign would not fit the definition of “war.”

But today a different tune, made all the more noteworthy given Obama’s record of distancing himself from his predecessor’s “war on terror” terminology and repeated insistence that “core” al Qaeda have been “decimated.”

“This war, like all wars, must end,” Obama declared of the “war on terror” in May 2013.

Now, his administration is pointing to that definition to say that we are still “at war” — and that it will continue, likely for years to come.