Hello and welcome to my second essay-length post which I have sub-affectionately dubbed a “quasi-article”. As always, what I am about to write is simply the conclusion that I have arrived at after analysis and study of a great deal of political happenings. My aim here is to incite constructive debate, and engage in an open-minded debate on the issues at hand. Today’s “article” is a bit less historically based as my first article (which had several references to the past lives of much of the current administration), yet I find myself actually having to dig up the old Lexis Nexis to check myself. What does this mean? That’s right, a rhetoric critique. I’ve been passively observing a rather subtle shift in rhetoric that I have finally come to believe may potentially have a very real societal impact. At first I, most likely just like you now, believed that there really was no difference. Using the word “terror” in place of “terrorism” is just an issue of brevity. But when we look at the philosophy of what a war on terrorism versus a war on terror, the differences are potentially dramatic. This war, this War on Terrorism, has been renamed. This new war, this War on Terror, is far more expansive. This is, of course, just a passing observation; therefore, I have dug up several transcripts to illustrate this transition of rhetoric. Please keep in mind that I am by no means giving an all-encompassing account of political rhetoric, I am simply trying to demonstrate what has seemed to me to be a shift in rhetoric since 2002.
Part 1: Non-Partisan Rhetoric of Terrorism:
On September 25, 2002, John King of CNN reported “Al Gore, who earlier this week offered a highly critical rebuke of the president's strategy in the war on terrorism and in confronting Iraq.”[1] John, for those of you that don’t know, is the Senior White House Correspondent to CNN. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that John votes Democratic (though I highly doubt it). We can then safely say that, as a major spokesman for the “liberal” CNN media, that the left is using the term “terrorism” at this point. Moreover, the voices of the right, such as Lloyd Grove, are also engaging in such rhetoric. Grove, of the Washington Post, wrote an article on October 9, 2002, citing: “the Justice Department's secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the object of increasing controversy since President Bush launched his war on terrorism.”[2] On July 16, 2002, we have reports still using the rhetoric of “terrorism” by the likes of Kyra Phillips (CNN Anchor): “All right. We have a broad new offensive in the war on terrorism now.”[3] However, by July 16, 2002, Democratic Strategist Bob Beckel has already suggested that the “war on terrorism” is a past-tense term: “OK. The fact of the matter is the markets were way up after the war on terrorism.”[4] Both sides of the political spectrum were using the full terminology of terrorism, and apparently without suffering any sort of time constraint for the extra three letters spoken. Brevity, it seems, was not the issue. So why is it that the rhetoric changed to drop the suffix?
Part 2: Terrorism out, Terror in:
Even as early as November 19, 2002, the Fox News Channel used the term “terrorism” sparingly, in cases such as reciting a summary or subtitle of a text as Brit Hume did, “And now, he has published ‘Bush at War,’ an inside account of President Bush's war on terrorism.”[5] But let’s not focus too much on Fox News as I find most of its coverage to be in the format of a Sports Center broadcast more than a source. The point is that conservatives and republicans begin moving away from the word “terrorism” and closer to the shorter term “terror” well before liberals or democrats are willing to. Not to mention, Bush beat them to the transition well before that date. On July 6, 2002, he spoke in a radio address: “At this hour, more than 60,000 American troops are deployed around the world in the war against terror.”[6] By the time of February 1, 2004, the rhetoric had been consistent for some time with Bush: “This week I traveled to Fort Polk, in Louisiana, to visit with soldiers and family members who are giving vital service in the war on terror.”[7] And by May 24, 2004 Bush had shown that the suffix was long gone for him: “We did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it.”[8] By June 23, 2004, the suffix ‘ism’ is scarcely applied. When it is; however, it is by Democrats, or liberals. Paul Begala of CNN’s Crossfire serves as a prime example: “More Americans trust John Kerry to fight the war on terrorism than President Bush.”[9] Even the title of that Crossfire episode used the “war on terror” in favor of “terrorism”. What, then, is justified by these two wars?
Part 3: Philosophic Justifications of a War on Terrorism:
When we look at a war on terrorism, as in the conceptual paradigm of terrorism, we find a war effort that most of this nation would rally behind. By most, I mean to refer back to part 1 of this essay; in other words, both sides of the political spectrum. When we fight terrorism, we engage in Plan Columbia (which sprays alleged cocaine factories and fields in Columbia in effort to prevent the FARC terrorist faction from financial success by trafficking in the US) fight the war in Afghanistan to usurp Al Qaeda strongholds, and send troops to train counter-terrorist forces in the Philippines to repel terrorist insurgents. What this amounts to, of course, already has a title: Counter-terrorism. There has yet to be a publication, editorial, interview, talk show scuffle, or public address that I have seen that argues against this endeavor. Why is there such vocal argumentation against the war on terrorism then? Perhaps it is due to the shift in rhetoric to the war on terror?
Part 4: Philosophic Justifications of a War on Terror
When we drop the suffix ‘ism’, we drop the conceptual paradigm of terrorism as a target of our war. We are no longer restricted to just terrorism, but are now fighting the concept of “terror”. What, then, is terror? The 2000 American Heritage Dictionary provides the following suggestions: 1) Intense, overpowering fear. 2) One that instills intense fear. 3) The ability to instill fear. 4) Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes. 5) An annoying or intolerable pest. We can give #4 for granted, but we can also give numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 for a bit of a chilling fit to our current enemies. Saddam Hussein was “one that instills fear”, and (it goes without saying) was at the very least “an intolerable pest” with “the ability to instill fear”. According to the 9/11 commission, he had no link with Al Qaeda on 9/11. And according to Colin Powell in his State Department addresses, no connection with Al Qaeda at all (the Czech Republic debunked a claim that Iraqi and Al Qaeda personnel met in Prague). No terror’ism’ connection, but assuredly a connection to terror. We may even say that he did perform terror’ism’ against his own people, though that assuredly has no place in the American War on Terrorism. When we are fighting terror; however, we no longer need to justify exactly who it is that is being killed in order to justify killing their killers. Of course, precisely the same things have been said around the world of Bush as have been said in this country of Bin Laden and Hussein. Despite the War on Terror philosophically applying as well to Bush when strictly speaking, this is still an American War on Terror. This seems to not justify anything special, yet provides immunity from justification instead. When we fight terror, anything that is potentially frightening, or whenever someone rules in a dictatorship (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sudan, North Korea, Libya, etc.) we have justified military intervention so long as “America” is not the one being attacked. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are strong allies, no fighting them. Myanmar, though a US embargo has been implemented, still produces the campaign paraphernalia for the Bush re-election. No fighting your production base. Sudan has finally been given some humanitarian attention, though a slaughter is being undertaken while our diplomats evaluate the situation. North Korea has already developed a nuclear weapon, so attacking them would result in the worst attack on us in history. Diplomacy for them. Libya has begun to buckle under pressure and has become the poster nation for the Bush administration’s new line that people don’t really want to be supporting terrorism (as opposed to “hey look we’re intimidating the whole planet in to signing on the dotted line as our puppet”), and so not even Libya gets military treatment in the War on Terror.
Part 5: Implications
Who, then, is a viable target? It would seem the Bush administration will let us know when they start mounting forces to invade. Thus far, the War on Terrorism has seen an arguably wonderful success in Afghanistan while the War on Terror has, for better or for worse, produced the current situation in Iraq. The shift in rhetoric still seems subtle, perhaps it is trivial, but, at least in the justifications that can be extrapolated from this alteration, the implications are dramatically different. Afghanistan and Plan Columbia aren’t getting the media coverage anymore, because compared to the War on Terror, they have been fantastic successes. The War on Terror is just what it sounds like, a national mobilization against the concept of terror rather than terrorism. We are fighting fear itself, and for the first time it seems that when fear itself is the only thing we have to fear, we have quite a bit on our hands. Fear becomes the mantra of the age. Terrorist threats become commonplace, insurgent attacks in Iraq become expected every day. American loss of life becomes both feared and sensationalized as evidence of a need to perpetuate the war. Terrorism seems to be providing the evidence after the fact for our engagement in a war on terror. Could this be a self-perpetuating cycle just as September the 11th lead to the altogether unrelated war in Iraq? Could we see the day of Zarqawi’s “August 22nd” (obviously a fictional date of terrorism) leading to an altogether unrelated war in Turkmenistan? It would seem that this is altogether possible given the rhetorical paradigm we have come to embrace in the past years.
Sources Cited:
[1] John King, “White House: Daschle's Wrong”, CNN September 25, 2002 Wednesday
[2] Lloyd Grove, “The Reliable Source”, The Washington Post October 9, 2002 Wednesday Final Edition
[3] Kyra Phillips, “Bush Unveils National Security Plan”, CNN Live on Location July 16, 2002 Tuesday
[4] Bob Beckel, Interview, CNN American Morning July 16, 2002 Tuesday
[5] Brit Hume, “Political Headlines; Interview with Bob Woodward”, FOX Special Report with Brit Hume November 19, 2002 Tuesday
[6] George W. Bush, Radio Address, CNN Saturday Edition July 6, 2002 Saturday
[7] George W. Bush, Radio Address, PR Newswire February 21, 2004, Saturday
[8] George W. Bush, Transcript of Remarks on the War on Terror, U.S. Newswire May 24, 2004 Monday
[9] Paul Begala, “Bush Administration Winning the War on Terror?”, CNN Crossfire June 23, 2004 Wednesday
