Vocab for War
I have often marveled at America for being the only country which goes to war and expects zero casualties! Of course, that’s mostly because the US fights its wars way outside its borders which inevitably raises the question domestically: why should our guys die for some reason associated with another corner of the world? Starting with the advent of missiles and now with drones, it’s entirely possible for the US to fight most wars without putting any “boots on the ground”. Jonathan Bernstein argues that this new type of warfare, with no soldiers on the ground, deserves a new term. Why? To make it clear to the American public that succeed or fail, they won’t see any body bags being flown in: “The press, along with the political establishment, utterly failed to find, or at least to consistently use, a vocabulary for what was on the table. Certainly air or missile strikes are an act of war, and should be reported as such; just as certainly, those sorts of limited attacks alway...