George Never Lets Me Down

So, earlier in the week I was complaining to the Butcher about how outrageous it was that Dear George could get down to speak to the Boy Scouts about their tragic loss of 4 leaders, but could not bring himself to go to a funeral every now and then for the soldiers he's expending in the War on Terror. Oh, excuse me. The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism. Jesus Christ. The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism? Well, it's got one thing going for it. At least it's honest. Wars have ends. Struggles go on and on and on and that's what this mess is, a never ending struggle against desperate, violent idiots who don't fear death. But do I think we're going to start being up front about all of the other struggles we've wrongly labeled wars? Will we get the Struggle Against Drugs? The Struggle Against Crime? The Struggle Against Poverty? (Hee, it's funny. The more you type 'struggle,' the more it seems like some wacky dance from the 60s.) But more importantly, this "struggle" has for me the same bullshitty ring as "conflict." And that's why I loathe it. Loathe, loathe, loathe. 1. I don't trust that Fucker as far as I can throw him and I have my suspicions that moving this from "war" to "struggle" will allow them to somehow fuck over the troops. I don't know how, because I'm not in the military, but this seems like exactly the kind of dumbass thing that leads people who need help from the VA 30 years from now to find out that their benefits don't cover such help because they weren't in a "war," they were in a "struggle." I hope Short & Fat will come by and tell me my fears are unfounded. But 2. Because I'm not in the military, I exactly get what they're trying to do with moving things from "war" to "struggle." A war has clear objectives, a clear enemy, and a clear purpose. It's becoming clearer and clearer every day that we don't have that. It's even becoming clearer to patriotic families who can usually be relied on to encourage their children to join the military, hence the reason the Army is struggling to recruit people. But a struggle seems less dangerous than a war. Sure, people might die in a struggle, but not as many people as die in a war. See, just by changing this word, it's safe again to send your kids into the military. Also, a struggle has no definite end. With a war, you have military families who want to know why they keep having to risk their loved ones over and over and over again when so many of the rest of us don't. When you're at war, it seems grossly unfair that some people are asked to repeatedly risk their lives while others of us don't. With a "global war on terror," the necessity for a large armed forces made up of as many young and able bodied Americans seems eventually necessary. The whole country ought to mobilize for a global war of any sort. But with a struggle, we don't need to talk about a draft. A struggle can be handled by the armed forces we have. So, patriotic Americans, there's no need to worry about your sons and daughters under Dear George's leadership. This is just a struggle, a minor state of conflict we'll have to be embroiled in for decades, but no worries. We're just reframing the whole thing to more accurately reflect the amount of thought you need to give this--very little--because George Bush loves Patriotic Americans and would never do them wrong. From Egalia:

Bush cancelled his trip to the Boy Scouts Jamboree due to bad weather. Meanwhile, more than 300 scouts became sick from bad weather, or from extreme heat, while waiting patiently for Bush to show.