The Global War Against Ambiguity (GWAA)

The US launches “Operation Swarmer,” which sounds like one of those crappy movies the SciFi Channel runs, and which involves many many air strikes near Samarra (the military operation, not the SciFi movies). See if you can follow the logic:

The BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington says a major show of force is being carried out in the hope of breaking a cycle of escalating violence which it is feared could lead to civil war.

First, fifty plus aircraft dropping bombs is not a show of force, it actually is, you know, force. Second, fifty plus aircraft dropping bombs is not breaking a cycle of escalating violence, it actually is, you know, escalating violence. Third, the idea is, what? to misdirect attention away from the civil war towards the ongoing imperialist war. No, sorry, I just don’t follow.
(There’s a correction in my next post).

Read the updated National Security Strategy, now with at least one guaranteed bitter laugh on every page. Did you know that “Since 2002, the world has seen extraordinary progress in the expansion of freedom, democracy, and human dignity”? It must be true, they have a graph showing the expansion of human dignity.

You just clicked that link to see if there was really a graph, didn’t you?

Did you know that you can’t have freedom of religion without free-market capitalism? It’s true: “In effective democracies, freedom is indivisible. Political, religious, and economic liberty advance together and reinforce each other.”

Did you know that we didn’t invade Afghanistan, we “joined with the Afghan people to bring down the Taliban regime”? Evidently there was some sort of popular uprising against the Taliban which has gone unmentioned until now.

Did you know that Bush’s policy is the “path of confidence,” while everyone else supports the “path of fear,” which “appeals to those who find our challenges too great and fail to see our opportunities”?

The US “will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense,” indeed, “we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack,” but “no country [i.e., no country not named the United States of America] should ever use preemption as a pretext for aggression.” As for our preemptions, “We will always proceed deliberately, weighing the consequences of our actions. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just.” Well, that’s okay, then.

Did you know that it was Saddam’s

refusal to remove the ambiguity that he created that forced the United States and its allies to act. We have no doubt that the world is a better place for the removal of this dangerous and unpredictable tyrant, and we have no doubt that the world is better off if tyrants know that they pursue WMD at their own peril.

What we’re saying is, we really really really hate ambiguity. It makes our head hurt. And you can see by the repetition of “we have no doubt” that we succeeded in eliminating the threat posed by Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Ambiguity.