Tuesday, December 30, 2014

The US War in Afghanistan Has Just Officially Ended by Virtue of New PR Label, but No One Even Tries to Pretend That This Is a Fact

As of yesterday, the war in Afghanistan has officially ended since, like in Iraq, the US devoted to its post-modern constructivism sees reality much in terms of "at the beginning and the end of this world is what it we say it is." So PR labels try to define reality for us, including the end of the wars, which were not even officially declared to be wars to begin with. As far as we got were various operations with various contingent adjectives and if we ran out of these, then just the adjective "contingent" itself was used.

This time, even the corporate media is forced to admit that the PR "ending of the war in Afghanistan" isn't really the end of the war. The US involvement in the war was merely renamed as of December 29. Together with it, the "International Security Assistance Force," the US-led and NATO-based alliance involved there was renamed as well--by tweet:

NOTICE TO OUR FOLLOWERS: Reflecting the launch of @NATO's new mission in #Afghanistan, @ISAFMedia is now officially @ResoluteSupport
— Resolute Support (@ResoluteSupport) December 28, 2014

The force is now thus "Resolute Support." This is almost as creative as "Determined Breathing," which, in fact, seems better for it is not clear what or whom exactly "Resolute Support" is going to support. Furthermore, the addition of the much needed (supposedly) addictive adjective "resolute" all but affirms that this support is going to be anything but "resolute." The lady is protesting ... emphasizing her virtue too much.

From a strictly literary perspective, this PR relabeling is not exactly superb either. For, in terms of obvious and inescapable associations, "Resolute Support" easily evokes and tends to evoke some similar terms ... such as "Life Support"--putting the policy and the country on life support was very likely what the Freudian devil of the suppressed unconscious wanted to say and hear after all.

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