Breaking! We’re Not Going to War Today!

How absurd it is that in six short years, this country has reached the point of waking up to 138 articles (as of last count, more surely posting by the minute), with variations on the following Reuters headline:

U.S. not planning for war with Iran, Gates says

February 2, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is not planning for a war with Iran and instead is trying to stop them from contributing to the violence in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

"The President has made clear, the Secretary of State has made clear, I've made clear ... we are not planning for a war with Iran," he told reporters.

Leave aside for the minute any analysis of whether Gates is speaking the truth here, or whether recent actions fall into line with his statement. Just consider how frog-boiled this nation has become in the piping hot water provided by the Bush administration since 9/11. Reporting that we’re not going to war – in effect, declarations of non-events – now make up one of the main news stories of the day. We don’t even blink an eye. In fact, we breathe a sigh of relief that at least in official statements, the country has not gone to war between the time when we laid our heads upon our pillows last night and when we staggered to the coffeemaker this morning.

Pity a once-proud country that now rises each day to take comfort in the fact that it hasn’t attacked, or officially planned to attack, another country overnight. And that this is considered headline news.