Real men don’t need a strategy of the weak

The idiots at the LA Times just scared the crap out of me with this misleading headline: “Policy OKs First Strike to Protect U.S.” They mean that the Pentagon’s new strategic plans codify Bush’s policy of preemption. This does not mean nuclear attack, which the term “first strike” usually means in a military context, as the headline-writer evidently does not know; thus the crap-scaring-out effect of that headline.

JARGON ALERT: This policy is known by the euphemism “active deterrence.”

My favorite sentence from the report: “Our strength as a nation-state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak, using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism.” I love how those three are just lumped together. The World Court, 9/11, pretty much the same thing. Strategies of the weak. The LA Times, by the way, so careless in its use of “first strike,” saw fit to replace the word fora with forums, in brackets, like there’s something wrong with Latin plurals.