The Misunderstanding O The Phones

Belmont Club » All We Are Saying …: "The problem of  declaring victory against an enemy who refuses to concede defeat is not new. The World War 2 generation solved the problem by continuing until the foe threw in the towel. Although President Obama may believe that victory consists in convincing one’s countrymen that “we won”, historically it  consisted of convincing the enemy that he lost. In World War II for example, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were defeated as a military fact by early 1944. But they were not convinced of the fact. The remainder of the war was spent knocking the idea into their consciousness.

But the allies did not declare peace in 1944. They went on and by mid-1945, Curtis LeMay’s bombers were incinerating one Japanese city a night; US battleships were shelling coastal towns, harbors everywhere were being mined and submarines kept ships from leaving or entering ports. Victory as an objective fact was not debatable. But to the Axis accepting defeat subjectively was unthinkable. One of the supreme ironies of World War II was that the Japanese high command needed the A-bomb more than the Americans. They needed it not to change any military fact, they were as defeated before the Bomb as after it, but in order to change a mental perception. The bomb provided the pretext to accept defeat.

But in the bad old, unenlightened days you convinced the enemy they lost. Today we’re smarter. We convince ourselves the whole misunderstanding should never have happened in the first place."

(I shouldn't need to tell you this is another RTWT from Wretchard.) But apparently even Obama and his masters aren't so crazy as not to realize they still need to fight in some fashion lest they lose their power to the Islamofascists. Well, more precisely I should say to rival Islamofascist gangs.

So what is their solution?  Why to turn "1984" on it's head and amp it up of course!  Remember in 1984 we have the spectacle of a never ending but actually fake war -- the powers needed the spectre of one another as further pretext to suppress their populations.  "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."  (Should I say much as our political parties do now? ;)

Now instead we have the specter of fake "peace" with an amped up 1984 police state continually struggling to slide its "indiscretions" back under the rug and avoid public consciousness.  But the rug is getting lumpy enough that the proles (or BNW's Deltas if your prefer) are having a hard time keeping their balance!

Walter Russell Mead nails it as "public peace, private war". Wretchard quotes from him including this:

From the President’s point of view, the public belief that we have been engaged in a “war on terror” is part of the many sided problem he inherited from his predecessor. As long as that kind of military mindset dominates public thinking, even Democratic presidents will have to spend lots of money on defense. Tensions between America and Islam will fester, with the risk of more attacks and confrontations making things yet worse. The flexibility of presidents in reaching out to Islamic movements and governments, and perhaps also pressuring Israel to make more concessions in the hope of further reducing regional tensions, will also be limited. When they think the country is in danger, Jacksonians are vigilant and engaged; when they think all is well, they go back to sleep. This President wants them asleep, clinging to their guns and Bibles all they want, but not bothering their pretty little heads about American foreign policy.

This contains some great insight. But Mead then concludes by putting his finger on the artery of the deception (a bit not quoted by Wretchard):

President Obama is now caught in a trap of his own making. By downplaying the threat and trying to create an atmosphere of peace and normality in the country, he has delegitimated the measures he believes that our safety requires. Having tried and failed to keep these secrets dark and hidden, he must now try to explain what many Americans will find inexplicable. If the terrorists are really on the run, and we can finally go back to a 9/10 state of mind, why are you assembling and wielding the most powerful and intrusive systems of surveillance ever conceived?

In a 9/12 world, these measures can be understood, though there are legitimate questions to be asked about oversight and slippery slopes. In a 9/10 world, they are much harder to justify. And so, Mr. President, the ball is in your court. Where exactly do we stand, and what kind of world are we living in today?

But then Wretchard's own dynamite conclusion swings full force:

The readers of this blog will remember all the posts which warned of the dangers of falsely abolishing war by redefining it as a law enforcement problem. The result, I wrote, would either grant all enemy combatants the rights of citizens or to reduce all citizens to the status of enemy combatants. It was an act of supreme intellectual dishonesty, a self-deception so obvious it was hard to see how anybody but a man of the Left could fall for it. The whole thing was a con pulled off by President Obama on a voter base so eager to see itself as intellectually sophisticated and morally superior they were willing to call a horse chestnut a horse.

President Obama’s solution to the problems of the world are those of a con man. And he had no difficulty convincing his base it had no enemies, faced no unemployment, that it could look forward to free healthcare. And that it could have free Obamaphones. He forgot to say there was one problem with those phones ….

Go back to sleep now. Those are not clicks you hear on your shiny new iPhone connections. Just a general Hoovering sound is all.

And remind me again how Petraeus was convinced to change his mind about those Benghazi talking points?

1984 filled with proles and BNW's Deltas who think Obama is just dreamy!  It's not cool to be smart.

And if you pay enough attention it turns out that you're what's for dinner.