Rahm says NATO is a peace group

Studs Terkel

Yesterday was Studs Terkel's 100th birthday. I'm certain if Studs were alive today he would get a chuckle listening to this mayor's bombast as much as he did listening to the last one's. I don't know what could possibly top Rahm's latest description of NATO, the world's largest war machine ever on the face of the earth, as an an organization working for peace.

You see, according to the mayor, the reason he brought the NATO summit to Chicago is so the WINDY city could be the historic scene of the Chicago Accords -- the agreement to put an end to war --as we know it.

The Sun-Times' Fran Spielman writes:

As the NATO summit draws near, Emanuel has become increasingly defensive about an event that many Chicagoans view as a giant headache... But after the U.S. Secret Service disclosed plans to close three major expressways, lakefront museums and countless roads to protect President Barack Obama and other world leaders, the mayor acknowledged that it was a whole lot more than a “minor inconvenience.”

Rahm

So, it seems Rahm has changed course (or at least his PR team has). Now he is trying to placate Chicagoans by telling them their sacrifices are for the good of world peace.

“NATO will be now deciding how to de-emphasize its involvement, its footprint in Afghanistan and how to wind down its presence. It will be known as the ‘Chicago Accords,’ basically,” the mayor said.

“That’s significant. Something that started post-9/11 will now become de-emphasized and the NATO kind of presence as it dealt with Afghanistan will now be on the downward slop — not an upward slope. And that is going to be agreed to here.”

Translation: NATO countries, having exhausted most of their citizens' collective wealth and millions of young lives on wars and invasions since the end of WWII, are now redesigning warfare for the 21st Century. While the giant NATO war machine will still suck up great gobs of the world's GNP, and continue non-stop warring on any weaker nations with oil in their ground, it will now do so more efficiently with advanced drone technology, troops contracted through private mercenary companies like Blackwater, and advanced counter-insurgency tactics, ie. intelligence gathering through spying, assassination and torture.

Oh yes. I almost forgot. The NATO Summit will also be good for tourism (if there are any tourists who want to come to a city under virtual martial law, with its schools being closed along with its mental and health clinics, and it poor being evicted and put on the streets by sheriff's officers).

Welcome to Chicago! We miss you Studs.