Obama’s war with no name

The passive is never the voice of a leader. What plain folk asked to go to war crave is plain speech delivered with passion, a leader who says what he means, means what he says, and says on Tuesday what he said on Monday.

That’s not the style in Washington. Terrorism becomes “overseas contingency operations,” terrorism is “workplace violence” and “war” is merely an “action.” No cavalry general, this side of France, ever cried “charge!” and meant it as a suggestion or as a “battlefield advisory.” Winston Churchill drafted the English language in 1940 and sent it to war; Barack Obama drafts words and sends them over the hill.

President Obama, who yearns to be Horatius at the Bridge without breaking a sweat, must keep this in mind in making another of his celebrated orations without actually saying anything. If he truly wants to persuade his countrymen to go to war as the debate moves beyond posing, posturing and empty words, he’ll have to give up his fondness for evasion, equivocation and rhetorical trickery as Congress moves toward a decision.


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