It Depends on What the Meaning of the Word IsIs

How to declare war the slick Clintonesque way?  Parse it to death. Drone on and  on and on until the free-floating angst of a nation is rendered into acquiescence. Bore them to death with clinical academic discourse. The only bodies shown on TV will be the headless ones. The only atrocities ever shown on YouTube will be the ones committed by the latest in a whole series of CIA-manufactured renegades.

Assure anyone still paying attention that there will be no American boots on the ground despite the fact that at least a thousand pairs of boots are currently on the ground. Assure them that it will take at least three years to exterminate whoever dares stand in the way of the profiteering oil companies which dictate American foreign policy. However, be sure to substitute the words "American interests" and "ethnic minorities" for the corporations and their multibillion-dollar luxury bunker known as the embassy in Baghdad. Assure the lesser American people that other, lesser countries are also being asked to "chip in," so that the atrocities and the terror can be spread around. Brag that you've already got a whole baseball team (nine) of them, but neglect to mention that to the extent it exists at all, it's a farm league made up entirely of back-benchers and cheerleaders, with an occasional at-bat by a pinch hitter: maybe a Jordanian pilot flying an American bomber.

Obama, whose first presidential campaign was also declared the winner of AdWeek's 2009 marketing campaign contest, who disingenuously claimed on TV that optics are not his forte, will very deliberately and very optically and very officially declare yet another surge in Forever War this Wednesday. It is, of course, purely a coincidence that this date coincides with our great National Terror Holiday, known as Nine-Eleven.

Let the government mouthpiece of record try to explain:

The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.

The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145 airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and religious minorities and American diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back ISIS gains in northern and western Iraq.

Oh, and they're going to Syria. It's the next best thing to Disneyland for the neocon war hawks. They're already measuring their pudgy little fingers for their World War Series rings:

“Everybody is on board Iraq,” an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy is still being developed. “But when it comes to Syria, there’s more concern” about where airstrikes could lead. The official nonetheless expressed confidence that the countries would eventually come around to taking the fight into Syria, in part, he said, because “there’s really no other alternative.”

Once you've already "done" Afghanistan and Iraq, (and Yemen and Pakistan) there really is no alternative but to go on to the next theme park of terror. Might as well -- it's in the neighborhood, only a no-exit away on the Bellicose Highway.

As Bertrand Russell wrote nearly a hundred years ago in "Why Men Fight," there are only two ultimate aims of war: wealth and power. War is the manifestation of a profound lack of impulse control.“The state makes an entirely artificial division of mankind and of our duties toward them: towards one group we are bound by law, toward the other only by the prudence of highwaymen. The State is rendered evil by its exclusions, and by the fact that whenever it embarks upon aggressive war, it becomes a combination of men for murder and robbery.”

One such felon is George W. Bush's former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.N., now under investigation for money-laundering of the billions of dollars and euros he officially looted in his capacity as a "diplomat." The suspect, one Zalmay Khalilzad, is still active in the war business in his capacity as founder and president of Gryphon Partners, which "advises companies and wealthy individuals on business opportunities in several industries and regions, including high-risk territories."

According to AP, "he sits on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, America Abroad Media, the Mideast studies center at Rand Corp., the American University of Iraq and the American University of Afghanistan. He also is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and writes about foreign policy issues and frequently appears on U.S. news shows."

You can watch this war profiteer/media personality teaming up just last month with one of Obama's former "national security" advisers/media personalities to foment more war in this recent CNN (The War Channel) clip.

 If we do not have enemies, we create them. ISIS is the pure creation of neo-con warmongers and the military contractors and Wall Street capitalists. It's only the latest mutation in the toxic stew sloshing endlessly in the closed feedback loop of money begetting power begetting death begetting more money, more power, more death. The nightmare quest for "national security," in turn, begets nothing but endless insecurity.

Is it any wonder that American leaders are escalating international war in the wake of Ferguson and increasingly unsustainable wealth disparity? It is imperative that this dying republic herd the citizens into the veal pen to bray helplessly and fearfully at more and more manufactured enemies, thus keeping us in line on the domestic front. Just when we have met the Enemy and he is the plutocratic Police State (not us) our attention must be diverted to a different, external menace. That is the meaning of the word ISIS --  in the words again of Russell, "it is the essence of the State to suppress violence within and facilitate it throughout."

Come to think of it, World War I has never really stopped raging, has it?