Last week, and before the terrible events at Beslan began, Joshua Micah Marshall, a Contributing Writer for the Washington Monthly and a columnist for The Hill, posted this (30 August; see Harry's Place, too):
"We have a clear vision on how to win the war on terror and bring peace to the world." George W. Bush, 30 July, 2004"I don’t think you can win [the war on terror]. But I think you can create conditions so that the — those who use terror as a tool are — less acceptable in parts of the world.” George W. Bush, 29 August, 2004
The NYT picked up on this, and so the President's words came to be widely reported. To some, this all seems to amount to very little. Jeff Jarvis commented that he didn't get this 'minor dustup' and then proceeded, with admirable straightforwardness: 'we won't "win" against every terrorist and we should not fool ourselves to think that that day at the surrender table will ever come'. (Contrast Tony Blair's statement at yesterday's Downing Street press conference, when asked if he could define a "victory" in such a war: 'We can win the war on terrorism, and ultimately we will win'.) In the UK weekly (4 September), The Week, Jeremy O'Grady (Editor-in-chief) reflecting more generally about politics and politicians, wrote: 'Where it is virtue in a journalist to unravel complexity and avoid ambiguity, it is virtue in a politician to embrace ambiguity and fudge. How else can he build the fragile coalitions required to take political action? What we need most from our politicians is good results.'
All this may be worldly-wise, but from the outset the expression 'the war on terror' made many uneasy. The phrase has proved to be a most effective piece of political rhetoric. With 'rhetoric' at the forefront of my mind, I picked up the LRB and found Perry Anderson explaining the extraordinary, formative role of rhetoric in French educational life — rhetoric acting as a kind of hyphen, linking philosophy and literature:
The potential cost of a literary conception of intellectual disciplines is obvious enough: arguments freed from logic, propositions from evidence. Historians were least prone to such an import substitution of literature, but even Braudel was not immune to the loosening of controls in a too flamboyant eloquence. It is this trait of the French culture of the time that has so often polarised foreign reactions to it, in a seesaw between adulation and suspicion. Rhetoric is designed to cast a spell, and a cult easily arises among those who fall under it. But it can also repel, drawing charges of legerdemain and imposture. Balanced judgement here will never be easy.
The most valuable, recent commentary I have read on the phrase, 'the war on terror', and its rhetorical effectiveness comes from George Lakoff:
You've said that progressives should never use the phrase "war on terror" — why?There are two reasons for that. Let's start with "terror." Terror is a general state, and it's internal to a person. Terror is not the person we're fighting, the "terrorist." The word terror activates your fear, and fear activates the strict father model, which is what conservatives want. The "war on terror" is not about stopping you from being afraid, it's about making you afraid.Next, "war." How many terrorists are there — hundreds? Sure. Thousands? Maybe. Tens of thousands? Probably not. The point is, terrorists are actual people, and relatively small numbers of individuals, considering the size of our country and other countries. It's not a nation-state problem. War is a nation-state problem.
What about the "war on drugs" or the "war on poverty"?
Those are metaphorical. Real wars are wars against countries, and in the "war on terror," we are attacking countries. But those countries are not the same as the terrorists. We're acting at the wrong level. Meanwhile, by using this frame, we get a commander in chief, as the Republicans keep referring to Bush — a "war president" with "war powers," which imply that ordinary protections don't have to be observed. A "war president" has extraordinary powers. And the "war on terror," of course, never ends. There's no peace treaty with terror.
Orwell said that, in his time, 'political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness' ('Politics and the English Language', 1946). ... Writing in 2001, Garton Ash commented that,
(Orwell) 'does not just equip us to detect this semantic abuse. He also suggests how writers can fight back. For the abusers of power are, after all, using our weapons: words. In 'Politics and the English Language' he even gives some simple stylistic rules for honest and effective political writing. He compares good English prose to a clean window pane. Through these windows, citizens can see what their rulers are really up to. So political writers should be the window cleaners of freedom.If I had to name a single quality that makes Orwell still essential reading in the 21st century, it would be his insight into the use and abuse of language. If you have time to read only one essay, read 'Politics and the English Language'. This brilliantly sums up the central Orwellian argument that the corruption of language is an essential part of oppressive or exploitative politics. "The defence of the indefensible" is sustained by a battery of euphemisms, verbal false limbs, prefabricated phrases, and all the other paraphernalia of deceit that he pinpoints and parodies.
Christopher Lydon's latest posting appeared on 2 September. It needs to be read in full, but this clip is pertinent:
The deep dread among all sorts of people I know is quite simply that 'since 9/11, our country has undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible,' as Chalmers Johnson summed it up in The Sorrows of Empire. 'As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America's democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country.'
