I'm just saying...

What’s in a word?

I had begun this post some time back as the policy of vocabulary change of the current White House administration concerns me. After the fiasco with McCrystal yesterday I am pissed.

I get it. I get it. It was stupid to allow the reporter access. But it was a special ops solider, a general with more on the ground combat time than any other current serving general, who committed a stupid political move. He is not a political man, he is a solider. He is not a stupid man, he came out of the field to attend the War College and get his advanced university degrees. But he is not a political animal – obviously.

Bringing him back to Washington like a recalcitrant schoolboy did not sit right with me – you do not treat such a warrior in such a manner. Call him to task for the dumb interview, have him apologise, and let him get back to work. I realize Obama, who is falling out of favour with this voter, had to look all in-charge but if he could have put his bloody testosterone on hold and looked at the greater good he would have accepted an apology. He ended the career of a great soldier who has sacrificed much for his country and risked his life more times than I can count. “Allowing him to resign” is the bloody same as firing him.

My feeling about the crap for brains and shit for judgement reporter shall go unmentioned.

Is no one reading his or her history? Shiva! This region has been ungovernable, undefeatable (is that a word?), and unmanageable for more years going back further in time than the written word. I think the Taliban is one of the worse regimes since my guy Genghis Khan, who came through the region, but unless we colonize Afghanistan we are never going to be able to govern it nor set up a democratic government that puts the people first. This will not happen until more people in the country want it than are too afraid to die for it. Democracy cannot be imposed, it can only be won.

I said the same thing about Iraq – if we are going, throw away the pretence, colonize the place, get it in order, then stay and run it or pull out all together and leave them to it.


President Karzai – what an idiot and why are we supporting him? Karzai controls a one km area around Kabul, or rather the western forces in country control a one km area, and that’s it. That’s it. You understand that? He has no control over the rest of the country, and like all Afghanistan politicians I have ever known, he is on the take from anyone willing to pay out.

Petraeus is an army wiener, he was in charge of Iraq and look how well that went - all I have to say on that.

The White House policy on nuclear weapons and changing the vocabulary of the War on Terror….taking out “Islamic Jihad”, “Islamic extremism” and substituting less onerous terms borders on the absurd if it was not so inherently dangerous.

Calling it something different will not make it go away; it will not protect citizens of America, Israel (who I don’t see rewording anything), France, Britain, Morocco, or any other nation. Words are important, they give an issue weight. You want to change the wording on something, how about changing the wording on the “War on Drugs”? There’s a bureaucracy that has outgrown it’s purpose, and the DEA can now only exist as an entity if there is a “WAR on Drugs” – not a lot of incentive to end off eh?

Hoover began the trend with his “First War on Crime” back in the day of Dillinger, to use an issue to build a bureaucratic empire and finance it with taxpayer dollars.

Yes, I expect a great deal of disagreement with these views, so knock yourself out. I’m still pissed.

Ciao.