“Wartime president.”

Those words have an amazing power over the American mind it seems. Along with the myth that *we* only go to war for good causes, and invariably in self-defense, we buy into the myth that we must cede greater power than is usually considered to be the norm to The Leader in such times. Because all our experience from childhood on seems to confirm that when you have a big job to do, you need one person to direct things, and for everybody else to do what that person says, or else everybody just runs around higgledy-piggledy or Keystone Kopsishly, getting in each other’s way, whacking each other’s heads with long boards, trying to go through narrow doorways three abreast, and the like.

So of course our current Regime Leaders invoke the word “wartime” at every opportunity. Problem is, if we ever were “at war” (very dubious without a *Congressional* declaration thereof, and “authorizations to use force” are not the same thing), we are not at war now, and have not been since

May of 2003, when George W. Bush stood below a “Mission Accomplished” sign aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and correctly declared that we had “victoriously” defeated the Iraqi army and overthrown their government…
What we have now is an occupation of Iraq…

—and it is very, very important that we stop saying we are, and call bullshit on any attempt by BushCoInc to claim otherwise. Further explication of this notion is found in a very interesting piece over at Common Dreams. Go read.

If Democrats can succeed over the next three months in making it clear to average Americans that the “War In Iraq” ended in 2003, and that we’re now engaged in an “Occupation Of Iraq,” then Democratic suggestions to end or greatly diminish the occupation will take on a resonance and cogency that will both help them in an election year, and help to bring our soldiers to safety and Iraq to stability.

(Thanks to an unknown Anonymous in an Atrios comment thread for the tip.)