President Bush misuses the word “war”
Here’s a novel idea. We are not at war.
We deposed a bunch of meanies known as the Taliban from Afghanistan, though it’s unclear exactly why, given that it was the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda which was apparently responsible for crashing two planes into the World Trade Center and one plane into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. We’ve been unable to capture Osama bin Laden, which is unfortunate, given that he apparently helped fund and/or mastermind those and other terrorist attacks. This strikes me as a glaring failure of our government, military, and intelligence organizations.
Apparently unsatisfied by their success in Afghanistan, the Bush administration planned an unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Once again, we deposed another meany, Saddam Hussein, which might have been good, except for the vacuum of power left in his wake. This has ignited sectarian violence between the Shi`ites and the Sunnis, as well as an insurgency movement against the remaining “coalition [of the willing].” It was more than three years ago (three years ago!) that George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.
Since that point, by my estimation, we’ve been defending the Iraqi people from themselves, we’ve been defending the Afghan people from the Taliban, and we’ve been defending the American people from further terrorist attacks. This is called defense. You can call it a “war on terror,” but like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, war in that sense just means “fight” or “comprehensive effort to defeat.” It does not mean War.
So for the President to say:
Congress was briefed, and what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America.
and the Vice President to say:
The New York Times has now made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future, publishing this highly classified information about our sources and methods for collecting intelligence will enable the terrorists to look for ways to defeat our efforts.
and the Treasury Secretary to say:
The New York Times’ decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide.
and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee to say:
[I will urge Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to] begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher. We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous.
…in essence to condemn the freedom of the press by saying “we’re at war,” is both wrong and misleading.
