Diotallevi wrote:


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["]."

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.

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 full text of the speech 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.