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A new lexicon for these times:

Nine Orwellian Propaganda Terms That Define Our War State

WAMM Newsletter  July/August 2011

Victory: Like defeat, it’s a loaded word and rather than define it, Americans should simply avoid it. Enemy: Any super-evil pipsqueak on whose back you can raise at least $1.2 trillion a year for the National Security Complex.

Covert War: It used to mean secret war, a war “in the shadows” and so beyond the public’s gaze. Now it means a conflict in the full glare of publicity that everybody knows about, but no one can do anything about. Think: in the news, but off the books.

Permanent Bases: In the American way of war, military bases built on foreign soil are the equivalent of heroin. The Pentagon can’t help building them and can’t live without them, but “permanent bases” don’t exist, not for Americans. Never.

Withdrawal: We’re going, we’re going—Just not quite yet and stop pushing! Drone War (see also Covert War): A permanent air compaign using missile-armed pilotless planes banishing both withdrawal and victory to the slagheap of history.

Corruption: Something inherent in the nature of war-torn Iraqis and Afghans from which only Americans, in and out of uniform, can save them.

National Sovereignty: 1. Something Americans cherish and wouldn’t let any other country violate. 2. Something foreigners irrationally cling to, a sign of unreliability or mental instability.

War: A totally malleable concept that is purely in the eye of the beholder.

—Tom Engelhardt, from longer article in Tomdispatch.com

© 2011 Women Against Military Madness.
All rights reserved. Used with permission.