Rhetoric 305: Advanced Modern Warspeak

Class, be seated. Now, as we were discussing last time, war is no time to speak simple words: these are the dates that live in infamy, the houses divided upon themselves, and the day we, as the human race, stand up and declare our inde-pendence...oops, sorry, that was a movie. Where was I? Oh yes, these are the times of a 90-percent approval rating for George W. Bush, DC '68, a knighthood for Rudy Giuliani, and a tribute song from each of the biggest musical acts in the world, including Bob, from Bob's Discount Furniture. No, not every wartime president can have a Gettysburg Address, but there's no need for one either, since no one has an attention span of four score and seven minutes. Modern warspeak is about the sound byte. The ambiguous yet catchy sound byte.

ILIANA BOUZALI/YH

Take the names of our operation in Afghanistan. First, we had Operation Infinite Justice. Justice is good, infinite's a lot, so infinite justice is a lot of good. Ambiguous yet catchy. Unfortunately, a few terrorists went against the whole concept of the sound byte, thought about the operation name, and realized that God is often described as having infinite justice.

OK, fine, replace infinite with enduring and justice with freedom, and you have Operation Enduring Freedom. Still catchy, still looks good on a t-shirt, and it has the added bonus of evoking images of waving flags rather than bloodied people. Most important, it contains the word freedom.

Freedom is what we love, as a freedom-loving people. This is a good thing to love. Freedom is what they hate, which is why Sept. 11 was "an attack on freedom." The Taliban keeps women in semi-enslavement because they aren't a freedom-loving people, while Bush refuses to grant illegal immigrants amnesty, keeping them in semi-enslavement, because he is not...I'm getting lost again, forgive me.

The war we fight, keep in mind, is not a war against the Taliban; it is, as the graphics on the news keep telling you, a War Against Terrorism. Not to be confused, of course, with the War Against Drugs, which we gave the Taliban a lot of money to fight. This makes a difference, mind you.

The other major difference between then and now is that now, war is rarely formal war. There has been no formal declaration of war from Congress, though Congress would pass anything with the word freedom in it, and this operation clearly has freedom in it. As we learned in Vietnam, all it takes is a crisis for Congress to let a president make war without declaring war. Checks and balances, as we all know, were an important part of the Constitution.

Vietnam, as Mr. Bush has said, is a war America lost "because it didn't want to win it strongly enough." This is excellent warspeak for "America didn't want to fight it." Bush spent his Vietnam tour of duty in the National Guard in Texas. He didn't want to win it very "strongly" either. But why bother anyway? Vietnam was never even a war: during the commemoration of Yale graduates who lost their lives for this country during the Tercentennial, it was simply called "Vietnam," something that happened after "The Korean Conflict," something that happened to take over 58,000 American lives, most of them lower-class blacks and Latinos. Only two Yalies died in Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese also died in "Vietnam," but, since it's where they live and not a war, it could be said thousands of them die in Vietnam all the time. If we lose this current war, it will cease to be a war, and with any luck, people will forget the dead. Much like the Korean "conflict."

Most of the world still thinks of America as a land of cowboys, and Bush is helping the image by putting out a bounty on bin Laden, "dead or alive." The effect on the economy has been incredible, sending the sales of "Bin Laden: Dead or Alive" t-shirts and Bon Jovi's single "Dead or Alive" through the roof. It's a memorable quote, because like P. Diddy's latest beat, we've heard it before. We elected a movie-cowboy president to tell us about Star Wars and the Evil Empire twice because we like what's familiar and fictional. Plus, "dead or alive" doesn't sound as ridiculous in text as when spoken by Bush, important because more Americans get their news from print and the Internet than TV nowadays. TV news, as we all know from "Vietnam," is dangerous because war doesn't look so good on TV; in fact, it looks like war. There's a reason you didn't see much of the Gulf War.

So, in conclusion, the way to practice good war rhetoric is to make war disappear. Turn it into a cowboy movie, a waving flag, a tribute song, anything that's catchy yet meaningless. Then, with no questions answered, tell us not to ask questions. Class dismissed.

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