a conversation long overdue

A day or two ago Pachacutec from FDL asked the unaskable question: is the War on Terror (gasp!) bullshit? His answer was a little weak (I think he misunderstood the etymology of "Terror" in that phrase as being shorthand for "terrorism") but he gets props for daring to address the question first. And apparently he upset neo-cons: the thread got hijacked by conservatives positively flummoxed over Pach daring to ask such a treasonous question.

It is Digby who really hits it out of the park, though:

When you think about it, a "war on terrorism" is actually a "war on warfare" which kind of brings the whole damned thing home, doesn't it? ... A war on warfare is entirely absurd, however, in a literal sense. Using war to eradicate terror or terrorism is an oxymoron. And yet the nation has been drunkenly behaving as if it is a real war, spending the money, deploying the troops, inflicting the violence.
...
This is the problem. This elastic war, this war against warfare, this war with no specific enemy against no specific country is never going to end. It cannot end because there is no end. If the threat of "islamofascim" disappears tomorrow there will be someone else who hates us and who is willing to use individual acts of violence to get what they want. There always have been and there always will be. Which means that we will always be at war with Oceania.

"Oceania," for the non-Orwell fans, is the country Britain fights endlessly against in 1984. In the book, the war is prosecuted endlessly, British society is constantly propagandized and permanently on a war footing, and the war is used by the government to keep the people in line.

As an aside, this is why all the conservative ranting about things that are "PC" is bullshit. You think what Digby is saying here is politically correct? There are plenty of issues that liberals get pounded over just for questioning them, just like conservatives. Liberals, unfortunately, don't have the "PC" chimera to hide behind.