America

What’s in a Word?

As someone living in Beijing, I am constantly bombarded with propaganda—from red-letter posters telling me that “we are building a harmonious bus station and society,” to ones that proclaim “it is everyone’s job to prevent fires,” and the other innumerable mottos about the Olympics and the importance of social harmony, I’ve seen it all. Because I live in a country in which propaganda is the norm, I’ve become acutely aware of its presence in the United States. While this piece is not meant to be all encompassing, I’d like to make a few points about framing and then discuss two words that have come into vogue in America in recent months: “surge” and “insurgent.”

Conventional wisdom—a term coined in 1958 by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith—holds that the winner of an argument is almost always the person who sets the parameters, or “rules of the game.” This can be seen in the Presidential campaigns; is Barack Obama is transcendent figure who will bring an end to partisan politicking, or is anyone who believes that, “living in a fairytale” and “rolling the dice” by supporting him, as Bill Clinton has said? The way in which the media and public decide this question will have far reaching implications for the Democratic Primaries to come.

The underlying point is that framing matters. Moreover, by setting the “rules of the game” one is able to dictate what is going to be discussed. For example, the Bush Administration has done a masterful job of framing the Iraq War. Not only is it a part of the “War on Terror,” (terrorism is a tactic, not a group; furthermore, staying in Iraq is not in the interest of those trying to win this so-called war, although that’s another topic for another posting) but it is being fought against one foe: the “insurgents.” This term has a monolithic implication—if we can just somehow defeat the insurgents, then we’ll be fine. Yet the groups currently engaging in guerilla warfare are fighting both the U.S. and each other—the ex-Baathists, followers of Moqtada al Sadr, Al Qaeda, and local clan leaders are not all from the same stock. By reducing all of them to “insurgents,” we are obfuscating and simplifying the complexities that currently confront the U.S. and the Iraqis.

Moreover, the “surge” has shifted the focus of the American public from the key benchmarks for Iraq and towards one statistic: a drop in violence. Yet even a decrease in the number of American and Iraqi security force casualties is not going to fix the problems in Iraq. It may delay them, but it will not fix them. The addition of ground troops in Iraq is not going to lead to reconciliation and compromise, an agreement over how to share oil wealth, or an end to the civil war. If anything, arming and training the security forces in Iraq is laying the groundwork for the future subjugation and/or extermination of the Suuni population.

The focus on insurgents and the surge has caused people to miss the forest for the trees—the immediate implications of the war and occupation are obscuring more general trends like the growing alienation of the Arab street from the U.S., which serves as a great recruitment tool for al Qaeda and reaffirms long-held notions that the U.S. is just an imperial power interested in oil and the subjugation of Arab peoples. Should the U.S. attack Iran, look for leaders in the Middle East to turn away from the U.S. as a protector and toward a country with an extremely bloody last that is running a sunshine campaign about how loving and peaceful its rise on the world stage will be: China.

Not only have “insurgent” and “surge” come to dominate discussion of Iraq and thereby clouded the thinking of most of the American public, they have also crept into our discussion of the Presidential election. Obama is the “insurgent” candidate doing battle with the establishment (i.e. Hillary Clinton). Moreover, Huckabee saw a “surge” at the polls when he won in Iowa, as did Hillary when women “surged” to the polls in New Hampshire, which is helping her “surge” ahead in the rest of the country. The point is that, by using these terms over and over again, we forget what they mean, why they have entered the general lexicon and the way in which they serve the agenda of those who started using them. When listening to candidates and politicians and reading things in the papers, it is important to remember that the all catch phrases originated somewhere, and in most cases the reason for their creation was not to illuminate, but to obfuscate.

© 2008 The Hypermodern.