Forum Overview :: Motherfucking News :: What a pouty child you are

[quote name="Diotallevi"][quote name="fag packet"]War is the attempted conquering of a nation, a people, an area of land. The war is over when the thing no longer has power to resist. Terror is not a thing, it is a tactic. Al Quaeda might be the current MVP in the terror Little League, but any aspiring terrorist could study its tactics and emulate them. As long as the tactic is effective and possible it will be used. A war on terror is like a war on the tank rush in RA2. [/quote]Thank you, General Clausewitz. OK, everybody who thinks that the US is really at war with "TERROR," or that nobody in the government is clever enough to know that terror is a tactic and not an entity that can literally be fought, raise your hand. Now make a fist with that hand and bring it down onto your face as hard as you can, you stupid motherfuckers. The "War on Terror" is not literally a war on "TERROR," and everybody knows it. Not just you, everybody, the rubes, etc. The phrase is a placeholder, like "9-11" for something too complicated to fit into a sentence. Jesus, I'd hate to have seen you fuckheads 30 years ago... " 'Cold War?' How can you have a war against THAT!!!! Those people are so DUM! Wear a fucking sweater." "Well if it's really a war on Communism, why aren't we fighting them? Why isn't Yugoslavia on their side? Why (post-Nixon) is China on our side? I am very smart for having noted these ["]inconsistencies["]." SO. INFANTILE. It's not a LIE, either, because, as you point out (thinking you're clever for spotting it, I guess) the literal interpretation of the phrase is meaningless to the point of absurdity. Still, it's clear that precisely what this placeholder stands for is the subject of at least some honest confusion (like, I think, Fussbett's. Yours is either willfull misrepresentation, or blissfull ignorance, I can't tell.) There are three good reasons for this. First, the good guys need to play it close to the vest, because some of our "allies" are really enemies, or at least, they're part of the problem, and we need to get rid of them. But of course you can't go around saying, "A stable, friendly Iraq will at least partially alleviate our dependence on Saudi oil, which will give us the freedom to put REAL pressure on them to kick their enormous terror-funding habit or get the fuck out of the country," out loud if you're the president, because people pay attention when the president says things, and like the statement I made up says, we need to get our Iraq shit together BEFORE we get it on with the Saudis, or we're fucked right out the gate. Second, many of the people who work in mass media, like the subtly spinning AP reporter (look at the <a href='http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2003/sp20030523-secdef0222.html'>full text of the speech</a> the quoted portion is CLEARLY his segue from the part of his speech where he talks about the war on terror to the part where he talks about the future, and the graduates' place in it) in the story Fussbett linked, are, to the extent that they understand what the plan is, hostile to it. So you get wierd distortions and spin in places where you might not expect to find it. Finally, there is a dispute going on within the executive branch as to how we ought to handle the problem. It's not really Rumsfeld v. Powell (IMO that was a good cop/bad cop game), but it is State v. Defense. Some of the lifers in both departments have very different views as to how we ought to deal with terrorism. Everything looks like a nail, you know? But State is very wierd right now. All kinds of crazy stories about fucking up NK, and undercutting the president etc... Even your dad doesn't understand everything...[/quote]