It's always 1984 at the Pentagon

One of the prime slogans of Orwell’s “1984” is “War is Peace”. That’s using Newspeak, the official language of the Party. I prefer Oldspeak: “War is War”, especially our ten year war in Afghanistan, our war without end. A US soldier kills helpless civilians after serving four hellish tours of duty. There’s a surge. There’s a pause. A General leaves. A new General takes over. It doesn’t matter. Karzai gets mad. Karzai cools off but mostly he gets paid millions of dollars of our tax money. We’re stuck in Doublethink with the Pentagon’s 27,000 public relations staff systematically falsifying our goals. Let’s go back to a real Commander-in-chief, Dwight Eisenhower, who famously warned of a permanent arms industry of vast proportions. He said, “the danger of military influence over public policy will drive spending and encourage fear and even war”. During Eisenhower’s two terms, precisely one American was killed in combat, by a sniper in Lebanon. In the beginning, Washington and Hamilton wrote that “wise American leaders will avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is particularly hostile to republican liberty”. As for us, a Russian general warned us about the Afghans : “You’ll see. You’ll see”. Will we? As that wise philosopher Pogo Possum said many years ago, “We has met the enemy and he is us.”