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The master illusionist brilliantly spins war into peace before our very eyes

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   1 comment
Message Michael Payne

The entire world watched as a man who is in the midst of conducting three wars simultaneously, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. That event in Oslo was, without a doubt, one without precedent in world history. It seems that Barack Obama, the master illusionist, has taken a chapter from George Orwell's brilliant novel "1984" and attempted to convince the entire world that War is Peace.

That novel was published in 1949, with Orwell describing the fictional scenario that he envisioned taking place in 1984. War is Peace has been defined as one of the ironic maxims that was trumpeted to the mentally enslaved population of Europe to falsely convince the people at that time that a good (did he really mean just?) war in foreign lands makes peace at home possible.

I was dumbstruck as I considered the striking parallel between what President Obama was conveying in his acceptance speech was the Orwellian definition of War is Peace - that war distracts us from the real economic and social problems we have at home. Orwell was talking about exactly what is happening in America today; we have tremendous economic and social problems in America, but we are being distracted from them by three wars in foreign lands: namely, Iraq, Afghanistan and the one Mr. Obama never mentioned in Oslo, the latest war, just getting underway in Pakistan.

In his acceptance speech Mr. Obama referred to war 44 times; and, yes, he did mention peace 39 times. This is just plain staggering to the imagination - that a peace prize recipient would use the prestigious awards ceremony as a vehicle through which to make a case for conducting war. Yes, I know he was attempting to make a case for his interpretation of a "just war," but those that are naà ¯ve enough to buy into that logic are great candidates for my latest low interest offerings on sub-prime mortgages.

President Obama, the clever master of illusion that I naively supported during his presidential campaign, appears to have become very skilled in the language of Doublespeak, part of a concept created by Orwell, which is defined as "a language designed to make the bad seem good, make the negative appear positive, make the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable, and create incongruity between reality and what is said or not said." Sound familiar?

I referred to three wars, including the rapidly escalating conflict in Pakistan. While Pakistan has been subject to inner turmoil for decades, with competing factions trying to gain control of the government, this turmoil has been steadily increasing ever since the U.S. invaded and occupied Afghanistan. It's quite clear that the result of our military actions have been causing a steady migration of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

As those insurgents continue to move into Pakistan, what exactly is going to happen? A new, very dangerous phase in this war is almost certain to evolve. The Pakistani government is receiving intensive pressure to increase its attacks on the insurgents. Secondly, the U.S. military will, with or without the blessing of the Pakistani government, escalate its own involvement in Pakistan by incursions against those insurgents and by increased use of the dreaded drones that rain death upon both enemy targets and innocent civilians.

The distinct danger of this escalation into Pakistan is that the war will be moving deeper into a nation that has a nuclear arsenal. With the U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least they did not involve the danger of nuclear weapons. But that will change radically in Pakistan where things could easily get out of control, bringing the situation to a boiling point - one that could ignite a massive inferno if desperate insurgents or those who support them got their hands on a nuclear weapon. If that should happen, you can believe that India will be fully ready to swiftly retaliate should that be necessary. And where that might lead is unthinkable.

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