kateoplis:

War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. But with lost jobs, foreclosed homes, crumbling infrastructure, and weird weather, who even notices? This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up. […]  

Victory:Like defeat, it’s a “loaded” word and rather than define it, Americans should simply avoid it. […] 

Enemy: Any super-evil pipsqueak on whose back you can raise at least $1.2 trillion a year for the National Security Complex. […]

Covert War:It used to mean secret war, a war “in the shadows” and so beyond the public’s gaze. Now, it means a conflict in the full glare of publicity that everybody knows about, but no one can do anything about. Think: in the news, but off the books. […]

Permanent bases: In the American way of war, military bases built on foreign soil are the equivalent of heroin.  The Pentagon can’t help building them and can’t live without them, but “permanent bases” don’t exist, not for Americans. Never. […]

Withdrawal: We’re going, we’re going… Just not quite yet and stop pushing! […]

Drone War (see also Covert War): A permanent air campaign using missile-armed pilotless planes that banishes both withdrawal and victory to the slagheap of history. […]

Corruption:Something inherent in the nature of war-torn Iraqis and Afghans from which only Americans, in and out of uniform, can save them. […]

National Sovereignty: 1. Something Americans cherish and wouldn’t let any other country violate; 2. Something foreigners irrationally cling to, a sign of unreliability or mental instability. […]

War: A totally malleable concept that is purely in the eye of the beholder. […]

[Read more at TomDispatch]