With the arrival of Barry onto the scene back in 2009, it was in fairly short order that there was a change in nomenclature regarding how we were to refer to the "War on Terror". Because word quickly went out that it was now to be called an "Overseas Contingency Operation." Apparently very little has changed, because according to John Kerry-Heinz our battle with the group ISIS is not to be referred to as a ‘war’ but instead as a "counter-terrorism operation."
Here are but a few of the questions put to Kerry-Heinz on Thursday along with his various and, quite frankly, rather idiotic responses:
"Will this be another presidency defined by a war in Iraq?" NBC asked Kerry-Heinz:
Kerry-Heinz responded by saying, "No. No. I’m convinced it will not be." And then he went onto say, "Iraq has its own government now. Iraqis are making these decisions. Iraq does not want American combat troops on the ground. Iraq wants to win back its future."
Kerry-Heinz then proceeded to drone on as only he can, saying, "And I believe what we are engaged in is not a full-fledged war like we were before; it’s a heightened level of counter-terrorism operation, and it will have its own pace, its own dynamic, but it’s counter-terrorism, and it is happening -- not because the Iraq experiment failed -- but because ISIL came about and invaded Iraq and the military dropped the ball and obviously there were expectations of them standing up that didn’t hold up."
------------
And then he was asked by CBS, "Is the U.S. at war with ISIS?":
And he answered saying, "Well, we’re engaged in a major counter-terrorism operation -- and it’s going to be a long-term counter-terrorism operation. I think 'war' is the wrong terminology and analogy, but the fact is that we are engaged in a very significant global effort to curb terrorist activity, and it’s unfortunately too prevalent in certain parts of the world, and in certain cases represents a direct threat to the United States and to our interests in those regions. So we’re going to have to, obviously, be super focused on that.
"But I don’t think people need to get into war fever on this. I think they have to view it as a heightened level of counter-terrorist activity. It’s – have a slightly higher level of activity, but it’s not dissimilar to what we’ve been doing the last few years with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in Yemen and elsewhere."
------------
And then it was CNN who piped up and told Kerry-Heinz, "Is the United States at war with ISIS? It sure sounds from the President’s speech that we are."
And Kerry-Heinz said, "I think that’s the wrong terminology." And he went on to say, "What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation, and it’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being at war with ISIL, they can do so.
Adding finally, "But the fact is it’s a major counter-terrorism operation that will have many different moving parts, many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war. But it’s an effort to destroy them ultimately through that counter-terrorism approach."
------------
Kerry-Heinz was asked by ABC, "The president stayed away from saying that we’re at war with ISIS. Is the U.S. at war with ISIS?"
"No," Kerry-Heinz said. "Look, we’re engaged in a counter-terrorism operation of a significant order. And counter-terrorism operations can take a long time, they go on. I think 'war' is the wrong reference term with respect to that, but obviously it involves kinetic military action. It has its dangers, and – but it’s critical to the security of the United States and in this case to global security because of the reach of ISIS.
------------
State Department spokesmoron Marie Harf and Barry adviser Anita Dunn have also used the phrase "counter-terrorism operation" to describe the bombing of hostile targets in Iraq and Syria. So I guess by not using the term ‘war’ means that one is not actually involved in a ‘war’? But then, can it even be called a war when only one of the combatants actually views it as such? And how can you ever expect to win a war when you can’t even bring yourself to identify it as being a war?
No comments:
Post a Comment