Jeffrey Sachs explains that we are being subjected to a war narrative, not meaningful discussions of the kinds of facts that nations should consider before deciding to engage in a war, especially a war of discretion:

The war in Syria. And you may actually hear from grown up reporters who are lying through their teeth or ignorant beyond imagining that, oh, the war in Syria? Yes, Russia intervened in Syria. Well, do you know that the Obama tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian Government, starting four years before Russia intervened? What kind of nonsense is that? And how many times did the New York Times report on Operation Timber Sycamore, which was the presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Bashar Al Assad? Three times in 10 years. This is not democracy. This is a game. And it’s a game of narrative.

Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003 Well, first of all, it was completely phony pretenses. It wasn’t, “Oh, we were so wrong. They didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.” They actually did focus groups in the fall of 2002 to find out what would sell that war to the American people. Abe Schulsky, the if you want to know the name of the PR genius. They did focus groups on the war. They wanted the war all the time. They had to figure out how to sell the war to the American people, how to scare the shit out of the American people. It was a phony war.

Where did that war come from? You know what? It’s quite surprising that war came from Netanyahu, actually. You know that? It’s weird, and the way it is, is that Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we’re going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Syria and Iran. And the guy’s nothing if not obsessive, and he’s still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week. He’s a deep, dark son of a bitch. Sorry to tell you, because he’s gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all of this in the US politics, he’s gotten his way, but that war was totally phony. So what is this? Democracy versus dictatorship? Come on. This is these are not even sensible terms.

And consider this conversation offered 20 years ago by Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark:

About 10 days after 911 I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs, just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used used to work for me and one of the generals called me and he said, “Sir, you got to come in. You got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No. Said, no, no. He says, we’ve made the decision. We’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq. Why?”

He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do?”

So I said, “Well, did they find some information collect connecting Saddam to al Qaeda?” And he said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way, they just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only two you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He said. He reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper. He said, “I just, he said, I just got this down from upstairs,” meaning the Secretary of Defense Office today. And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.”

George Carlin often discussed the power of words. I would propose that we re-re-name the Pentagon as the “War Department.” In modern times, it rarely performs the function of a “Defense Department.”

Carlin had it right so incredibly often:

What kind of wars do we typically fight? Carlin explained:

He goes on to describe that the U.S. government is especially fond of waging war against countries populated by brown people. He explains that bombing people is a good thing to be good at if you don’t have any other national talents.

Can’t build a decent car, can’t make a TV set or a VCR worth a fuck, got no steel industry left, can’t educate our young people, can’t get health care to our old people, but we can bomb the shit out of your country all right! Huh? Especially if your country is full of brown people—oh we like that don’t we? That’s our hobby! That’s our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya, you got some brown people in your country, tell them to watch the fuck out or we’ll goddamn bomb them!

One last thing: How to quickly turn a terrorist group into a group of fighter that are loyal to the cause: