Posted on 01/31/2009 12:00:47 PM PST by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!
WASHINGTON – The "War on Terror" is losing the war of words.
The catchphrase burned into the American lexicon hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is fading away, slowly if not deliberately being replaced by a new administration bent on repairing the U.S. image among Muslim nations.
Since taking office less than two weeks ago, President Barack Obama has talked broadly of the "enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism." Another time it was an "ongoing struggle."
He has pledged to "go after" extremists and "win this fight." There even was an oblique reference to a "twilight struggle" as the U.S. relentlessly pursues those who threaten the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
'Under Obama, 'war on terror' catchphrase fading'About time. That phrase was STOO-PID™ political correctness, squared. 'Terror' is a tactic and you don't fight a war against tactics. That phrase made as much sense as a 'war on blitzkrieg', 'war on wolf packs', or 'war on kamikazes' would have.
And there never was a "Global war on terror' (or 'terrorism'"). That too was just another STOO-PID™ p.c. phrase. Because if there really was one, we'd need 12,000,000 troops and would be fighting from the mountains of Nepal to the jungles of Brazil and helping the Russians fight the terrorists in Chechnya.i.e.: anywhere and everywhere there was 'terrorism'. But we aren't, so there isn't.
Now I don't know which of Dubya's speech writers came up with those phrases but whomever it was they should stay unemployed for a loooong time. Or go work writing commercials for children's cereal or pet food.
[I'm not defending Barry but those phrases were just dumb and needed to go a long long time ago.]
We need to find out why Muslims hate us so much.
Uh, Mohammad?????
you are so right we should all hop on unicorns and fly around the woods and sing and get drunk because the Messiah asshole has renamed terrorisim ‘twilight before the real war’ fun and games with the coruupt gang from Chicago, everyone have a cocktail and bend over for the no lubed head between your legs.
‘twilight before the real war’
This war is on our freedoms and Constitution and every thing our country has stood for. “The real war” is the one Ayers has been waging for decades. 0bama is the vehicle to his victory. If Ayres lived in my neighborhood, I would suggest he sleep with one eye open - clutching his pillow tightly.
Now, he said, there is a sense that the U.S. should be talking more about specific extremist groups — ones that are recognized as militants in the Arab world and that are viewed as threats not just to America or the West, but also within the countries they operate.
The thinking has evolved, he said, to focus on avoiding the kind of rhetoric "which could imply that this was a struggle against a religion or a culture."
I guess this guy reflects Obama’s thinking.
Just what kind of militant groups are thought of as extreme in the Arab countries?
As I recall Bush was talking about specific groups. Namely the Taliban and al Quida.
He did pledge to fight terrorism where ever it raised its head but he concentrated on the above two groups.
However in today’s world one would have to admit that the majority of terrorist groups are Islamic Fundamentalists and that reflects a struggle against religious and cultural militants.
Yesterday while listening to the Toby Keith song - Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue - I thought Obama would never play that song at an event. It’s going to be a very long 4 years.
Right, it is up to us to keep it in the spotlight with headlines like:
Obama cedes “war on terror” to Islamists
“War on terror” won 2002-2008, lost 2009-12
Non-existant “war on terror” claims more American lives
School, Airport, Train bombings not linked to fading “war on terror”
Try it out. The possibilities are endless
90% of American voters will need the Cliff’s Notes to even know what you are talking about.
Funny, lol.
No, no don’t start talking like that. We survived Carter and got Reagan. We survived Clinton and got Bush. As I view it we’re due another Reagan.
Who says it's not deliberately being replaced? What evidence has the AP reporter provided to justify that assertion? Zip. Nada. None.
Once again we have an AP reporter making something up out of thin air and calling it 'news'...
But only once since his Jan. 20 inauguration has Obama publicly strung those three words together into the explosive phrase...
So, let me see if I understand this correctly - Obama has only used the phrase, "War on Terror" once in public in the eleven days since his inauguration. Somebody do some quick research - has George Bush ever gone for eleven straight days or more and only used the phrase, "War on Terror" once in public? If so, did the AP publish an article about it? Why not?
"One of the contrasts between the two administrations is the care with which Obama uses language. He thinks about the subtle implications," said Fields, an expert on presidential rhetoric.
Bzzzzzzzt. Wrong Answer, Professor Fields. If Obama uses language with such care, and thinks about the subtle implications, then since the article reports that he has indeed used the phrase, "War on Terror" once in public since the inauguration, then clearly he chose that phrase with care and thought about the subtle implications. So, professor-know-it-all, doesn't that contradict the premise of this article (and of your foolish implication) that President Bush's use of that phrase was somehow a mistake that Obama is correcting?
Words from friends of Ayers and Obama on terrorism. They are putting the muslim terrorist of our day on the same diety level they placed the viet cong and nva so many years ago. Terrorist in their eyes is the US and every American who believes in our way of life. It’s no accident they refuse to label muslims terrorists.
_______________________________
We’re all terrorists
Steve Chapman’s column about Barack Obama’s friendship with Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers (”About Obama’s terrorist acquaintance,” Commentary, April 20) was far, far too simplistic. All of us who were adult Americans in the ’70s were complicit in one form or terror or another.
Yes, police officers were tragically lost in a foolish attempt to attack the U.S. government, but all such casualties were part and parcel of a foolish war instigated by a Democratic president and continued by a Republican.
The Weather Underground is guilty of terror, as is each Vietnam vet who killed or ordered the killings of civilians. I sat on my 2-S deferment and let it all happen; I’m guilty.
We’re all ex-terrorists, no matter which side we enabled then or are on now. That’s what wars of aggression do to the instigating nations.
Obedience and loyalty are never excuses for sins against mankind. Finger-pointing won’t hide that.
–Chris Deignan
Cary
Past transgressions
Steve Chapman apparently doesn’t believe in redemption by others for past misconduct. Nor does he demonstrate the need to cease and apologize for his own complicity in misconduct.
His column on Barack Obama’s relationship with former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn appears to be part of a concerted media and Republican campaign to paint Obama as unpatriotic. Ayers and Dohrn are convenient vehicles to further this agenda.
As one who opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s, I understand the frustration of those who worked to end an immoral war that needlessly killed more than a million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans. Ayers and Dohrn make no apologies for their particular efforts, which included condoning if not participating in violent conduct.
But Chapman fixates on the lack of apology as the main reason to impugn Obama’s character through his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn.
They long ago fulfilled their legal responsibility for their radical activities. They could have thrown away the rest of their lives as many in their movement did. Instead they redeemed themselves by becoming productive citizens, working to make this a better country and world.
Thankfully at least one presidential contender has the wisdom and courage to work with anyone, regardless of past transgressions, who now treads the path of peace and progress.
Instead of obsessing over refusals to apologize for 40-year-old behavior, Chapman and the rest of the Tribune editorial board should examine their continued enabling of the Bush administration’s needless and self-destructive war in Iraq, which is bankrupting America, morally and financially.
Our future leaders need to solicit the support of every thoughtful and productive member of society if we are going to end this catastrophic war and begin solving the avalanche of problems confronting America.
No you are wrong. The War on Terror is not a euphemism. It is an accurate description of what we are doing. The terror we face today has its origins in a certain branch of Islam, wahabism. It is now generally called Islamist. With a birth rate that makes mice envious the Middle-Eastern poor, nearly completely illiterate, dependent on socialism and ignorant of the outside world and real history form a breeding ground of hate.
We are fighting more than just individuals we are fighting a concept that justifies terror as a means of power. GW is right, we are not fighting Islam and if we were the world would be in conflagration.
The brilliant strategy of a War on Terror as opposed to a war on Islam has carved out a place for moderates in Islam, I for one believe we are winning.
Although, Obama will let victory slip away by kowtowing.
No you are wrong. The War on Terror is not a euphemism. It is an accurate description of what we are doing. The terror we face today has its origins in a certain branch of Islam, wahabism. It is now generally called Islamist. With a birth rate that makes mice envious the Middle-Eastern poor, nearly completely illiterate, dependent on socialism and ignorant of the outside world and real history form a breeding ground of hate.
We are fighting more than just individuals we are fighting a concept that justifies terror as a means of power. GW is right, we are not fighting Islam and if we were the world would be in conflagration.
The brilliant strategy of a War on Terror as opposed to a war on Islam has carved out a place for moderates in Islam, I for one believe we are winning.
Although, Obama will let victory slip away by kowtowing.
So we can’t call a war on terror a war on terrorist because we are in reality the terrorist. So what is next? Ayers has all the answers that speak through our manchurian president:
One World
June 26, 2008
—Besides the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which government permitted the execution of juvenile offenders until last year ( when the highest court in the land rendered a split verdict on the matter) ? (Hint: Recently, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bengladash, and Nigeria banned the practice).
—Now that Somalia has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, what nation stands alone in refusing to sign?
—Which government stands against 106 other nations in opposing the treaty that developed an International Criminal Court whose mission is to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity?
—With over half the nations of the world committed to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which major country has not signed?
—Which nuclear power withdrew from the treaty barring nuclear testing in space? (Hint: The same power recently scuttled a nuclear disarmament agreement, “unsigned” a global warming treaty, and walked away from a world conference on racism).
Another Quiz
June 26, 2008
Questionnaire
Name the six countries bordering Afghanistan?
Which country shares the shortest border?
Which the longest?
Where, when, and under what circumstances did Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ associate, sustain his shoulder wound?
How many Afghans were involved in the September 11 attacks?
What percentage of the world’s people live in the United States? In Asia?
What percentage of the world’s finished products are consumed by people in the US?
What percentage of the world’s energy resources are consumed in the US?
How large are the undeveloped oil reserves in Afghanistan? In Central Asia?
Of the world’s six billion people, how many lack the basics to survive? How many own a computer? How many have a bank account?
If the world were a village of 100 people, how many would be: a) literate? b) Muslims, Christians, Jews? c) hungry? d) homeless?
When President Bush says the US will never reconcile with an unpopular despot who oppresses his own people, is he referring to: a) Saudi Arabia? b) China? c) Iraq? d) Uzbekistan? e)None of the above?
When President Bush attacks the lack of truly democratic practices and institutions is he aiming his rhetoric at: a) Pakistan? b) Cuba? c) Saudi Arabia? d) Kuwait? e) The US? f) All of the above?
Fill in the Blanks
June 26, 2008
1. One percent of American households control as much wealth as the combined wealth of % of ____ American households.
2. ____ Americans made over $2 million a day from 1997-2000.
3. ____ people in the world can’t read.
4. If you own a refrigerator, have a bed and clothes in a closet you’re richer than ____ % of the world’s people.
5. ____% of the world’s people are non-white.
6. If you’ve never been tortured, been a slave, or seen a relative die in war, you’re luckier than ____% of people in the world.
7. ____ % of humanity owns a computer and has a bank account.
8. Less than 5% of the world’s people own ____% of the world’s wealth.
9. ____ % of the population of the world is Asian.
10. ____ % of the world’s population is non-Christian.
Teaching Malcolm X
June 18, 2008
Karen Salazar, an LA teacher, was fired for being “too Afro-centric,” notably teaching The Autobiography of Malcolm X. At a time when banning books is back in style in many quarters, and the right to think at all is under steady and screaming attack, Salazar deserves the support of all citizens, teachers, students and parents. Find her students’ protest on You Tube. Speak up for free thinking and open dialog.
Commencement Address, June 2008
June 16, 2008
Greetings, thanks, and congratulations ‘08!
Happy graduation!
I’m honored to speak to you on this special occasion, humbled to share this platform with your two dazzling classmates, each of whom articulated the deeper meaning of this moment in terms that are achingly real. What struck me most was the intensity of their stories, the joy, the struggle, the sense that today represents a community triumph, the collective effort of teachers and parents and loved ones and children and sisters and brothers. Everyone in this room is part of the accomplishment of these fine young people because everyone is connected in the intricate web of relationships and struggles and shared hopes. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it this way: “In a real sense all life is interrelated, all humanity is caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, united in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” This is the reality, and so we applaud the graduates, and, at the same time, we appropriately applaud everyone else in the room.
Congratulations!
The New City High School has been a special home for you in these last years, and it is worth noting that it is a place powered by a particularly precious ideal—the belief that education, at its best, is an enterprise geared to helping all human beings reach the full measure of their humanity, inviting you to become more engaged, more thoughtful and powerful, more fully human in your pursuits and your projects. That ideal—always fragile, never easy nor simple, always, always revolutionary and never more so than today—is central to achieving an open and democratic society. And like democracy itself it is an ideal that is never finished, never finally summed up—it is an aspiration that must be defended vigilantly, fought for ceaselessly, and achieved anew by every individual and each successive generation.
A school like this one wants you to grapple—both now and in the future—with a question central to the spirit and heart of democracy, a question both simple and profound, straight-forward and twisty: what’s your story?
All human life, of course, is in part a story of suffering and loss and pain. When that pain is preventable, that suffering undeserved, we resist, and in that resistance is another common-place in our human story.
Sometimes our stories are ignored or diminished by others, sometimes we are seen through the lenses of stereotypes and labels, our undeniable and indispensable three-dimensionality suffocated and diminished, our hopes handcuffed and our possibilities flattened and policed.
It’s here that you draw on your education, on our own mind and your own spirit, to lift yourself up and beyond the negative and the controlling. What’s your story? Who are you in the world? What in the world are your chances and your choices?
Telling our stories, trusting our stories, and listening carefully and empathically to the stories of others is part of the work of democracy. Everyone counts, and nobody counts more than any one else. In a real democracy the full development of each is the necessary condition for the full development of all.
What’s your story? How is it like or unlike other stories? Of course, you’ve now written your high school story—the good and the not-so-good, the beautiful and the weird—and that story is in the books.
But what’s next? What will you do now, as the poet Mary Oliver urges, with your one wild and precious life? What is the next chapter going to be, and the chapter after that, and after that? No one knows for sure, for only you can write those next chapters—and even so, only partially, for every life is also a dance of the dialectic, a sometimes difficult negotiation between chance and choice.
Stuff happens, and some of that stuff we can’t control. Still, education urges journeys—voyages of creativity and construction. So let’s focus on choice, the things you can decide to do or not to do here and now. And let’s keep it simple, again channeling Oliver, and lets call this three simple steps to the next chapter in your story.
Step 1. Pay attention! You cannot be free if you are living in a bunker— a barricaded space of your own or any one else’s creation. Open your eyes. Get out more. Your family, your faith community, your neighborhood, the United States—these are all fine starting points, but they are not the end of it. Reach further. Get in dialogue with different people, people with unpopular ideas, get in touch with a world outside your own beneficent (but limited and limiting) dogma. See how things look from another perspective. Take risks to see more and know more—the payoff is your own freedom. As Bob Marley sang: Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.
Step 2. Be astonished! There’s so much beauty in the world, some days it will make you ache. There’s so much unnecessary suffering and undeserved pain in the world, some days it will make you weep. Love the earth and the sun and the animals. Embrace the humanity of others. Despise riches and hate tyrants. Walk freely with the downcast and the despised. Love life. Be astonished.
Step 3. Trust your story! Intentionally, deliberately, with devotion and discipline. Act on what the known demands of you. Write it up, write it down. In a culture that seems to worship celebrity, always choose accomplishment instead; in a society that settles for stereotype, always choose to see yourself and others as an infinite universe of possibility.
That’s it—three simple steps—and it adds up to this: Love everybody! James Baldwin insists that love can take off the masks that we hide behind, love asks us to see beyond ourselves. I use the word love here to mean more than a superficial and personal sense of being “made happy.” No, I mean love in the way Baldwin used the term: love as a state of being or a state of grace, love in the tough and universal sense of quest and challenge and daring and growth.
Care about other people—really care—and be willing to sacrifice something of yourself in the tiny, unsung, unsexy ways every day that make life bearable. Give assistance and advice to everyone who asks, no exceptions. Devote your income and labor to others.
So in this election year, and in the years to come: VOTE LOVE!
For all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances.
Embrace a new world in the making, and dare to taste it with a kiss.
Just Vote Love!
—-Bill Ayers
Vote Love: A Quest
June 16, 2008
A word from the brilliant American writer James Baldwin:
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
More proof that when President Bush did it, it was evil, but when the phony messiah does it, it is a gift from above. Also, more attempts to legitimize Ayers so that 0bama will be justified:
Financial Shock and Awe
September 19, 2008
The mother of all bail-outs is upon us– approaching a trillion dollars in federal funds, that is, in tax-payer’s money, to get the big gamblers and hustlers and sharpies off the hook– and it’s way beyond global. Let’s call it galactic or stratospheric. It is awesome, and the questions just keep on coming:
When the big guys were raking in super-profits, we were not invited to the table to share the wealth, so why are we now told we must share the pain?
Isn’t this socialism for the rich?
If “government is the problem” and the genius of the “free market” the solution to everything from health care and education to national defense and public safety, why are the marketeers in line with their hands out?
We were told repeatedly by the powerful that there wasn’t enough money for decent health care for all, wonderful schools for poor kids, and support for a life of dignity and purpose for the elderly, so how did a trillion dollars suddenly materialize?
Further if full and generous funding for education and health care would turn ordinary, hard-working citizens into lazy, dissolute louts– that’s what they said– then what can we hope for the moral well-being of the financial wizards?
Is the government of the people, by the people, for the people, or has it finally become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Finance, Big Oil, and Big Pharma?
We were reminded that our patriotic duty required that we support a war-of-choice costing $500,000 per minute, but who profits, and who suffers in war?
I’m just asking…
Reactionary wing-nut sends national media on witch-hunt…
September 1, 2008
There is nothing to condemn about Ayers’ leadership over the past 20 years.
Chicago Sun-Times
August 30, 2008
BY LINDA LENZ
Somewhere in the afterlife, Walter Annenberg must be shaking his head and wondering what in the world is going on in Chicago. First, the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave up precious inches of their dwindling news space to report that the University of Illinois at Chicago was refusing — and then later agreed — to release documents detailing Sen. Barack Obama’s role in a nonprofit education project “started” by William Ayers, a founder in the 1960s of the radical Weatherman group, which embraced violence as an anti-war tactic.
The project in question was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a pairing of nonprofit organizations and schools funded by the late publishing magnate and mainstream Chicago foundations. Ayers had been one of the authors of Chicago’s proposal to get a slice of Annenberg’s $500 million multi-city school reform grant, and Obama was the project’s first board chairman.
The issue of Obama’s role arose when a blogger for National Review raised questions about his relationship with Ayers, a favorite election-year target of conservatives. The blogger felt quite sure that the pair were much closer than Obama intimated when he said he knew Ayers “from the neighborhood” where both live. The blogger hinted darkly that the pair were really ideological soul mates and that Obama was aligned “with Ayers’s radical views on education issues.”
When the appointed hour arrived for release of the documents, reporters, camera operators and bloggers descended on the hapless university library staff to pore over hundreds of files of grant proposals, meeting minutes and reports — a “media frenzy,” the Tribune called it.
And what did the muckrakers find? Horrors, Obama had attended meetings and retreats with the author of The Good Preschool Teacher and To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. He had actually rubbed shoulders — can you believe it? — with a distinguished professor of education who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in early childhood education and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction. He had probably even shared a cup of coffee, as only a co-conspirator would, with this professor, whose writings describe good schools as places that are “organized around and powered by a set of core values” and “effectively meet students where they are and find ways to nurture and challenge them to learn.”
In other words, Obama does, indeed, know Bill Ayers as more than just a guy from the neighborhood. So do a host of civic leaders in Chicago. For example, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board included Susan Crown of the General Dynamics Corp. family; Patricia Graham, former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Arnold Weber, past president of Northwestern University and of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. Indeed, just about everyone active in Chicago school reform in the early days saw Ayers as a colleague. No one ever accused them of being radical because of their association with Bill Ayers.
Whatever one thinks of Ayers’ actions 40 years ago, there is nothing to condemn, and much to admire, about his leadership and commitment over the past 20 years in making schools better places to teach and learn. And there is nothing to condemn, and much to applaud, in Obama’s close association with those efforts.
Some of the reporters assigned to dig into the Annenberg archives felt a little silly about it all, I’m told. Their editors should too.
Linda Lenz is the founder and publisher of Catalyst Chicago, an education newsmagazine published by Community Renewal Society.
Of course it’s fading. Terrorists are Obamas friends.
Bingo! I am sad to say.
Wish I could be alive 500 years from now when the stories of the mythical 'America' and it's great republic are being told around the campfires of the few surviving humans. Actually I'm glad I won't be.
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