A war by any other name is still a war |
A war by any other name is still a war
“Is it an earthquake or simply a shock? Is it the good turtle soup or merely a mock?”
Those opening lines from Frank Sinatra’s 1962 hit song “At Long Last Love” came to mind when President Trump parried with reporters on March 13 over how to characterize the U.S.-Israeli aerial bombardments of Iran. Trump called it a “little excursion.”
Some thought he meant to say incursion. But when a reporter pressed him and asked, “which is it, a war or an excursion?” Trump stuck to his semantical guns and hedged: “Well, it’s both. It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war, and the war is going to be — for them it’s a war, for us it turned out to be easier than we thought.”
According to Webster’s, an excursion is “usually a brief pleasure trip;” an incursion is “a hostile entrance into a territory;” and war is “a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict.” Iran has hardly been a walk in the park so far, costing us 13 dead and scores of injured American soldiers, to say nothing of the billion dollars a day in expenses. The Pentagon is urging Trump to ask Congress for another $200 billion in supplemental appropriations to pay for the war.
What is most puzzling is that, nearly four weeks after the initiation of the attacks, Trump still has not presented the American people with a coherent rationale for the war. His announced justifications and goals vary, from imminent threats of Iranian nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, to regime change and unconditional surrender, to an end to Iran’s state-sponsored global........