And another thing ...

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While I'm on the subject of egregious communication tactics, a reader of this blog commented on the subject post of mine, which alerted me to another tactic in common abuse. We have all seen, and frequently been amused by, pithy bumper stickers. One that is familiar to many reads as follows: "War Never Solved Anything!" Well now, anyone, even I myself, can come up with a clever sounding slogan. But, "clever-sounding" is not synonymous with "true".

In the example given (about war's supposed ineffectualness), contradictory evidence is quite easy to come by. In American history alone, it has solved and/or eliminated some major problems:

• American Revolution — Brought about the first successful instance of a Democratic Republic since antiquity.
• The War of 1812 — Preserved what the Revolution achieved.
• American Civil War — Preserved the Union and eliminated slavery in America.
• World War II — Defeated Nazism and Imperial Japan's aggressive expansionism.
• Korean War and the Cold War (which was a decades long threat of World War III) — Halted Communist expansionism in Northeast Asia, and reversed Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe.
• American intervention in the Balkan Wars — Halted the murderous ethnic cleansing.
• Iraq I, Afghanistan, and Iraq II — Overthrew the Taliban regime, and a vicious murderous thuggish regime in Iraq that for decades threatened its neighboring states.