Progress under Obama, you may believe in: Changing permanent war into persistent war

In his State of the Union speech on January 28, 2014, President Obama daringly mentioned the fact that the United States is and has been in the state of permanent war (for permanent war is much what imperialism is). This is what he said:  "But I will not send our troops into harm's way unless it is truly necessary, nor will I allow our sons and daughters to be mired in open-ended conflicts. We must fight the battles -- (applause) -- that need to be fought, not those that ... drain our strength and may ultimately feed extremism [implicit recognition of the fact that these wars the US has waged has fed extremism, as can be seen in Ukraine, Syria, or now again so well in Iraq]....  [so] America must move off a permanent war footing. (Applause.)"

A Reuters article from June 11, 2014 shows or, as a minimum, gives a clue of how this promised "moving off a permanent war footing" is being accomplished, especially in the light of the US of establishing new permanent bases in Eastern Europe and on the borders of Russia. The Reuters article on this says in the very paragraph: "[Our original] June 10 story was corrected to replace bracketed reference to 'permanent presence with 'persistent' ... and adds paragraph 7 to make clear troops will come and go between countries, maintaining ongoing presence with no permanent bases."

In other words, Obama and his permanent war establishment and media have decided to move from the state of permanent, perpetual war to "persistent war"--by means of editing, while pretending that "permanent" and "persistent" are as if very different or that, in fact, "persistent war" is actually an escalation, expansion, and intensification of the same permanent war--the "state of nature" or "natural state" in which this Hobbesian empire naturally finds itself.

Whether permanent (at times "love-intensity" permanent) or merely very persistent, this Leviathan war does feed extremism, it does drain economic resources (permanent unemployment cutting through age groups and qualifications is an interesting social phenomenon) and it is prejudicial, that is, very dangerous to mankind's health.