My personal life is much too depressing to talk about for now … next month should set a new high in panglossian delight … so I’ll just add some political commentary to make you aware of my continued existence–enjoy:
It’s over–well, almost. The Global War on Terror is now called “Overseas Contingency Operations,” which can be a little confusing to some of us. After all, we’ve been using initials to talk about things for a while. Everyone probably already knows about WWI and WWII but what about the O-wars?
The first one was OAF, remember that?
That was Operation Allied Force, where the US provided most of the muscle and all the backbone to stop the murder of Muslims by the Miloshevich-led Serbs. Remember how that ended?
After airpower defeated the Serbian military and was allowed to retreat, Miloshevich wound up being charged with crimes against humanity. However, he died of heart problems before a verdict was delivered.
What vowel comes after A? Here’s a hint–E. OEF was the next O-war.
Operation Enduring Freedom, is where America resisted the temptation to kill everyone after the bold terrorist attacks of 9-11. At first, it was called Operation Infinite Justice but the Bush administration changed the name when they were told it was offensive to Muslims.
Then OEF was subdivided into several sub-OEFs to deal with multi-geographical areas: Afghanistan, Philippines, Horn of Africa, Trans Sahara, Krygyzstan, and Pankisi Gorge (a.k.a. Georgia). The last two ended in 2004, but you don’t hear much about them in the press. Oh, did you think it was only in Afghanistan? I guess the collective press might have been confusing, but it is a global war, remember?
What vowel comes after E? I’m sure you know. I. The third O-war was OIF.
That was Operation Iraqi Freedom, sometimes called the War in Iraq–which just caused more confusion. At the end of it all, Saddam Hussein was tried and hung by his own people. Even with the tyrant dead and gone, a lot of fighting continued inside of Iraq–mostly terrorists killing Iraqis–but many Americans died also–albeit not in toe-to-toe fighting, but from a variety of suicide-terrorist attacks, called “homicide bombers” presumedly not to offend the people who wanted us dead. Anyway, Iraq is doing fairly well after all the American and other folks that have helped them. We’ll be leaving in less than 18 months–except for the 50,000 that will remain behind forever.
So now, Barack Obama has directed everyone to use the term “Overseas Contingency Operation” which I guess could be shortened to OCO. I guess that sounds better than OOF–which would have fit nicely in the series of O-wars–but OCO is what it is. But this is not all that has changed.
Janet Napolitano, our newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary, doesn’t like the word terrorism. She prefers to use “man-caused” disasters. Was the term “terrorism” offensive to the causers of disasters? I don’t know.
So who are the people who cause man-caused disasters? Disaster Engineers?
So we’ve got disaster engineers causing man-caused disasters in the OCO but we are trying our best not to offend anyone or to sound arrogant while we go about winning this war. Someone told me that recently Barack Obama apologized for American arrogance and announced that “America was not a war with Islam.” I must say, I’m a little confused.
Wasn’t OAF about Americans saving Muslims? Hasn’t OEF liberated Muslims in many places? Didn’t OIF result in the removal of a brutal tyrant in Iraq and then giving the country back to the Muslims who live there? Why would Barack Obama’s speech writers think he needed to make such an announcement? I don’t know.
On a completely unrelated note–within a few hours of the North Koreans launching an illegal missile, the US government announced that we’re going to defund our most promising anti-missile technologies. And we’re going to release all the disaster engineers at Gitmo, maybe even inside the US, because their home countries might be mean to them. Wouldn’t want that to happen.
With the advent of OCO, it might mean the GWOT is over. If it is over, what happened?
It’s easy enough to figure out if you look at the facts. We’re disarming, we’re releasing our prisoners, we’re trying not to offend anyone, and we’re not taking action against other countries that violate international law. Have you figured it out yet?
Yep, that’s it–we surrendered.
It just makes sense.
baidu…
Excellent article. From the energy of the terrorists groups around the world, it is apparent it doesn’t matter what you call the war, but only that you force the enemy into defeat.