Wednesday 17 September 2014

Rhetorical battles and perpetual war

The Obama administration surely had legal and political reasons to tiptoe around the word “war,” which evokes a visceral image of comparatively massive — and unpopular — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president, whose opposition to the former helped him win the White House, has staked part of his legacy on winding down armed conflicts. And a new war against ISIS could be perceived as not only a continuation of the previous operation in Iraq, but also an acknowledgment of its massive failures.  
Columbia Journalism Review: Is the US ‘going to war’ against ISIS?, September 16, 2014

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