John Kerry and the Orwellian Language of War
TEHRAN
(FNA)- When is a war not a war? According to John Kerry, launching
cruise missiles at Syria is not a war. Testifying before the US Senate’s
Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry said, "President Obama is not asking
America to go to war."
Kerry’s argument seems to hinge on the idea that no American ground
troops will likely be deployed. Of the proposed strikes, Kerry said, "I
just don’t consider that going to war in the classic sense of coming to
Congress and asking for a declaration of war and training troops and
sending people abroad and putting young Americans in harm’s way."
Perhaps no Americans will be put in harm’s way, although claims of
possible Iranian plans for retaliation cast doubt on that hope. But
regardless, innocent Syrians will still be killed by American missiles.
People’s homes and possessions will still be destroyed. Mass aggressive
violence will still be waged by the US government in a foreign land.
That’s a war.
And while Kerry is not currently proposing sending ground troops to
Syria, he acknowledges that it’s a possibility. Kerry also told the
Senate: "But in the event Syria imploded, for instance, or in the event
there was a threat of a chemical weapons falling into the hands of
al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our
allies and all of us, the British, the French and others, to prevent
those ( alleged ) weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of
the worst elements, I don’t want to take off the table an option that
might or might not be available to a president of the United States to
secure our country." But to be clear, Secretary Kerry and President
Obama are not proposing a war. Yes, they will use cruise missiles to
slaughter Syrians, and if they don’t like the Syrian government’s
response they may even send ground troops. War profiteers like Raytheon
will certainly profit. But the Secretary of State will insist it’s not a
war.
So, why the Orwellian "War is Peace" attitude here? Partially because
Kerry recognizes this war is not popular with the American public. Polls
show substantial public opposition. When explaining that he would not
consider American attacks on Syria a war, Kerry went a step further and
said "when people are asked, do you want to go to war with Syria, of
course not! Everybody, a hundred percent of Americans will say no." When
most Americans oppose war, the best solution apparently is to change
the name to something else.
But this attitude makes sense for another reason: The state wants to
conceal the truth about its wars. This is why it employs so many
Newspeak terms when discussing war. Murdering civilians becomes
"collateral damage." Any military age male killed by an American drone
strike is automatically labeled a "militant." And a war against Syria
becomes not war but "an action that can degrade the capacity of a man
who, in their thought, is willing to kill his own people by breaking a
nearly hundred-year- old prohibition."
The US government doesn’t want you to know the truth about their wars.
This is why Chelsea Manning is in prison for blowing the whistle on war
crimes, including an attack in which "US troops executed at least 10
Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant,
then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence." It’s why the
military denied for years that they used white phosphorus, a chemical
weapon, in Fallujah.
This rampant dishonesty is precisely why we should never trust them
when they want to go to war. Especially when they refuse to call war by
its name.
By Nathan Goodman
This article originally appeared on the website of Center for a Stateless Society on September 06
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