War is War And Not Something Else

The nature of obfuscation in politics is on many levels an accepted norm. The classic joke of a politician’s response to naming his favorite color as plaid, lest he risk offending a portion of the electorate is regularly expected and no longer raises an eyebrow. The concern, however, is that once elected, the verbal gymnastics employed during the election too often carries over into the serious and life affecting act of governing.

The former standard of such imbecilic conduct was the sight and sound of a sitting president of the United States, under oath, requiring a clarification of a specific query by asking “what the definition of ‘is’ is” It brought much ridicule and derision upon him, deservedly so, but in the larger context it occurred within the framework of a civil trial, hence there were no national security issues at play and so it was easily considered nothing more harmful than a politician simply excelling at the art of obfuscation.

The issue today is far more grievous and has serious implications for national security and the future of a thriving democratic republic based upon a self-governing nation.

The United States participation in the United Nations sanctioned actions in Libya can be debated from within the entire spectrum of political thought. The constitutionality of our involvement in such engagements, the presidential authority to act without congressional pre-approval, and even the basic ‘why only Libya?’ if the intended goal is to protect a people from their slaughter at the hands of their own government are all fundamental questions that must be asked and answered.

But before that necessary dialogue can begin, the art of governmental obfuscation must stop.

The stated government position is that the actions taken in Libya are not ‘war’: the official pronouncement is that we are merely engaged in “kinetic military action”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘kinetic’ as “active; lively; dynamic”.

While military action would not normally be described as ‘lively’, what else is a military force actively engaged in deploying weaponry anything else but ‘war’?

When a government fails to be honest with its citizenry about the most obvious of issues, it risks its credibility on everything else. The American people may be divided on the proper use of their military, but they know that when that military is firing missiles at another sovereign country, there is little left to the verbal imagination but to describe those actions as ‘war’.

The United States government needs to drop the art of obfuscation when our men and women of the armed forces are putting their lives on the line.

War is not a game of verbal gymnastics, not the art of defining ‘what ‘is’ is”; it is not a ‘police action’.

It is about life and death.

That fact, that reality, in and of itself, demands a basic fundamental and unshakeable level of honesty from a government to its people. Any government that chooses to engage in such simplistic nomenclature nonsense does not deserve the impassioned description of a government,” of the people, by the people, and for the people”.