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Herewith a recycled comment of mine responding to the recent news that Obama is keeping Gates as SecDef:
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The online NY Times article reporting Obama's decision to retain Gates as Secretary of Defense began with this sentence:
“President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.”
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I quickly scanned the article, which quotes various sources supporting this premise, but I didn’t see a direct quote explicitly citing “bipartisan continuity in a time of war”.
We’re at “war”? The only “war” I’m aware of is the mythical, fictitious “Global War on Terror” declared by outgoing President Unitard and his moribund criminal maladministration.
Oh, that’s right-- Obama piously latched on to this concept and affirmed it during his campaign. It was evidence of his “pragmatic” brilliance, because of the received wisdom that the lizard-brained troglodytic masses, fka the Silent Majority, must be fully reassured and comforted by the certainty that our President is, first and foremost, a competent and enthusiastic Warlord who will Protect Us from enemies-- even, maybe especially, ephemeral and imaginary foes. Not to mention the foes that US foreign policy creates and manufactures for the purpose of sustaining the martial mood.
Surely the erudite and intellectual new Commander-in-Chief is perfectly aware that this Orwellian “we have always been at war with Eastasia” subterfuge is just that. I guess Obama has "shrewdly" decided that it’s best to wait until he’s safely elected to his second term before stepping out from behind the curtain and revealing the truth to the troubled and fearful masses. Until then, it's, "Yes, Virginia, there IS a Global War on Terror."
Pragmatism! Is there anything it CAN’T solve?
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I repeat the above comment here to observe that the events in Mumbai are certain to provoke the Usual Suspects among politicians, political spokespersons, and the corporate media into heightened reification of the fictitious GWOT.
That is, the conventional wisdom will treat these horrific events as further incontrovertible proof that there is indeed an Enemy of Civilization out there which needs to be subdued and "conquered" by an Amerikan-led "Coalition of the Willing" employing massive military might-- cost be damned. And I expect that the protean incoming administration-- especially since it includes an incumbent Secretary of Defense-- will employ essentially the same demagogic terms of reference and perpetuate essentially the same Manichean mind-set expressed by the moribund incumbent in his characteristic bald and primitive manner since 9/11.
The president-elect and those who speak for him will surely express his views in a more thoughtful and nuanced form, perhaps by rebranding certain stale buzzwords and catch-phrases, mutatis mutandis: The New! Improved! Global War on Terror.
But I fear that dreadful events like the Mumbai violence will give the New Warlord an opportunity to further build his street cred with the agitated and fearful masses by reaffirming his priority to Keep Amerika Safe and Rid the World of the Abomination of Terrorism. And, by so doing, reaffirm the government's symbiotic partnership with the military/corporate complex to ensure More of the Same.
