We are not at war

[Coyote_Bandit]

War requires a formal legal declaration by Congress. That hasn't happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. What we have there is a military occupation. We ought not pretend otherwise.

Carry on.

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[earth mom]

1. It's a genocidal occupation

:grr:

[Goldstein1984]

2. I feel much better knowing

we're committing occupation crimes, not war crimes.

Innocent people are so much less dead when they die during an act of occupation.

[burnsei sensei]

6. Crimes against humanity all the same nt

[Goldstein1984]

8. That's what I'm teaching my grandchildren

They are inheriting a nation that has lost its way.

[RKP5637]

10. In fact, words pale to describe it... The wealthiest nation, the largest military and

we go on and on and on... we've become like bullies on the playground IMO. Many are making lots of money off the wars, but hey, that's unpatriotic of me to apply reason. Just wave the flag and follow the drones. I would not want to not be a REAL American. I'll just go stick my head in the sand or up my butt. War is good, we are a godly nation.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. It's a Super Holocaust of Alderaan proportions.

:crazy:

[Catherina]

4. Thank you n/t

[kenny blankenship]

5. We're not at war, we're in an authorized use of military force. We're waging euphemism.

And we'll be taking no detainees.

[unblock]

7. just 'cause it's not accompanied by "a state of war exists"doesn't mean congress didn't authorize it

this one does have congress's fingerprints on it, sorry to say.

[Coyote_Bandit]

9. I didn't say

that Congress didn't authorize military action.

I said that we are not at war.

Legally there is a difference. Also, the use of appropriate and accurate terminology creates different perceptions. Folks would think less of this military action if it were identified as the occupation it is. And that's the real reason no public official will call this what it is.

[unblock]

14. i'm not aware of any legal distinction

between "at war", "authorized military action", or "military occupation".

that is, what statute would actually have anything to say about one vs. another. is there something that's legally permitted when we're "at war" but not legally permitted when we're "occupying" another country? i don't think the law gets into any of that.

i agree that words have their import; i agree that what's going on in afghanistan is a "military occupation"; but i don't think that's a legal distinction.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. Amen, Coyote_Bandit.

[Amonester]

12. How about Empire "sustaining"...

That's how empires of the past have always behaved, until they fell.

[RKP5637]

13. I call it American Imperialism. And much as you say, history is full of

examples of fallen empires. I always walk away wondering WTF are we trying to do. A decade later...

[closeupready]

15. Because unless empires are willing to forcibly convert natives to the empire's way of life,

they will always lose. Nobody wants to live in a colony, or as a member of a non-sovereign state.

Thus, the need for a military to suppress insurgents and disseminate pro-empire propaganda. This succeeds as long as coffers are full and the empire's citizens are willing. At some point, empires overreach/overstay and go broke by spreading themselves too thin, and antagonizing too many people such that they need to marshal ever-increasing amounts of money and manpower to subjugate others.

But people don't really learn, or think they are immune to the countless historical examples which mirror their own.

[RKP5637]

17. As you say, "But people don't really learn, or think they are immune to the countless

examples which mirror their own." And for many today it's out of sight, out of mind. Many Americans lose no skin in wars of today. I also think it is generational, after a few generations people forget what earlier generations learned.

We will eventually run out of money but not until after all entitlements have been removed in the name of national security or whatever will be the cause to "suppress insurgents and disseminate pro-empire propaganda." And meanwhile the infrastructure of this country will soon be beyond rebuilding.

BTW- I watched Gasland this week on HBO. If you have a chance to see it, if not already, it is a very disturbing picture of what is being done to this country for natural gas which IMO (is/will be) far worse than the BP gulf mess.

[closeupready]

18. thanks, I will check that out.

n/t

[Igel]

16. Ah, legal niceties determining what common words actually mean.

Tip of canine tail bashes dog's brains out by wagging same.

It is a war. There is no official state of war declared.

My father committed suicide on 3/13 of this year. Yet until I had the death certificates, banks and other institutions acted as though he were alive. It took a week for the coroner to issue his report; it took a month for the county office to issue the death certificate. So for over a month legally my father was walking around, even though I had already received his ashes in the mail.

In fact, as far as the IRS is concerned he is still alive.

Doing the speech act--"IRS, banks, investment firms, insurance company, county deed office, here is the death certificate: My father is dead"--has nothing to do with whether or not my father is alive. His continued living was or is a legal fiction.

We are not at war in Afghanistan or Iraq. Two more legal fictions. We make up words to keep the legal fictions clear. These words are jargon. Jargon can be accepted into language, but specialists who engineer their specialized language have no authority to engineer everybody else's language to suit their specialized purposes. We manage to cope, as long as the specialists don't assume that they're better, superior guardians of the language than the people.

Note that this confusion of words with acts and deeds is endemic. Yesterday the Obama administration released a plan for abolishing homelessness in the US. It is unfunded; it is unclear that is had been adopted; legislation is required to implement some of its provisions; moreover, whether or not the plan could actually work is unknown. Yet immediately it was declared a commitment to action; it was then called "doing something" about homelessness. Within 20 posts somebody said it was good that Obama--apparently taken to be the actual author of the plan--had finally actually done something about homelessness. To point out that it was just a plan, not even one that was adopted, was to be ridiculed as a pessimist. A factualist, I'd have said, but for many in word-land, things-and-acts, actual facts, are irrelevant.

In physical chemistry we spent a lot of time doing utterly boring experiments and cranking out reams of utterly boring data. Then we had to analyse it. One important point was to account for error, both calculated and experimental. However, sometimes the plausible error was small enough that the erroneous results we got were exposed as being wrong. "Unknown" error was a valid reason; but in more than a couple cases, "incorrect theory" was the right answer. The point of the labs in those cases was to show that our assumption that the carefully derived equations were meaningless speech acts: If they modeled reality accurately, good; if they didn't, we declared them to accurately model reality at our own peril.

[closeupready]

19. I'm sorry about your father.

:( :hug: