WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME
By Joe Queenan
Wall Street Journal
63912309.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
April 13 2009
The Obama administration has come under intense criticism for
replacing the term "war on terror" with the emaciated euphemism
"overseas contingency operations," and for referring to individual
acts of terror as "man-caused disasters."
This semi-official attempt to disassociate the administration from
the fierce rhetoric favored by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has
enraged Americans on both the right and left. Many feel that such
vaporous bureaucratese is a self-emasculating action that plunges us
into an Orwellian world where words have no emotional connection with
the horrors they purport to describe.
Yet, if the intention of the Obama administration is to tone down
the confrontational rhetoric being used by our enemies, the effort
is already reaping results. This week, in a pronounced shift from its
usual theatrical style, the Taliban announced that it will no longer
refer to its favorite method of murder as "beheadings," but will
henceforth employ the expression "cephalic attrition." "Flayings"
— a barbarously exotic style of execution that has been popular in
this part of the world since before the time of Alexander — will
now be described as "unsolicited epidermal reconfigurations." In a
similar vein, lopping off captives’ arms will now be referred to as
"appendage furloughing," while public floggings of teenaged girls
will from here on out be spoken of as "metajudicial interfacing."
A Taliban spokesman reached in Pakistan said that the new phrasing was
being implemented as a way of eliminating the negative associations
triggered by more graphic terminology. "The term ‘beheading’ has
a quasi-medieval undertone that we’re trying to get away from,"
he explained. "The term ‘cephalic attrition’ brings the Taliban
into the 21st century. It’s not that we disapprove of beheadings;
it’s just that the word no longer meshes with the zeitgeist of
the era. This is the same reason we have replaced the term ‘jihad’
with ‘booka-bonga-bippo,’ which has a more zesty, urban, youthful,
‘now’ feel. When you’re recruiting teenagers to your movement, you
don’t want them to feel that going on jihad won’t leave any time for
youthful hijinks."
Central Asia is not the only place where the coarse terminology of the
past is being phased out. In Darfur, the words "ethnic cleansing"
are no longer in use, either by rebels nor by the government
itself. Instead, the practice of targeting a particular tribe or
sect or ethnic group for extinction is being called "unconditional
demographic redeployment." In much the same spirit, the archaic term
"genocide" — so broad and vague as to be meaningless — has now been
supplanted by "maximum-intensity racial profiling."
"We’ve got problems here, sure, just like any other society," explains
a high-ranking Sudanese official. "But we’re not talking about Armenia
1915. We’re not talking about the Holocaust. The Eurocentric term
‘genocide’ gives people the wrong idea. And it really hurts tourism."
Another very positive sign that global rhetoric is being turned down a
notch is the decision by the North Korean government to refer to its
offshore nuclear tests as "intra-horizontal aqua-aeonic degradation
simulations."
"You start throwing around terms like ‘nuclear testing’ and you scare
the hell out of the Japanese,’ says a Hong Kong-based expert in East
Asian euphemisms. "It’s why the expression ‘people’s liberation
army’ always worked so much better as a recruiting device than
‘mass murderers.’"
Another hopeful sign of a subtle cooling of heated diplomatic rhetoric
is an official directive by the Hugo Chavez administration instructing
journalists to stop using the term ‘nationalizing oil fields.’ Last
week, the more graceful term "petrolic resource reapportionment"
began to appear in prominent Venezuela media, along with "amicable
annexation."
Yet perhaps the most encouraging sign of all is in Mexico, where
vigilante groups have announced that they will no longer use the term
"death squads" to describe their activities. Instead, death squads will
be identified as "terminus-inducing claques," "free-lance resolution
facilitators," and "off-site impasse adjustors."
Finally, in yet another determined effort to disassociate itself from
the bellicose imagery favored by the Bush administration, the State
Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will no longer employ the term
"bad guys" to describe al Qaeda.
"It’s juvenile, it’s demeaning, and it’s judgmental," says a
high-ranking administration spokesman. "From now on, the bad guys
will be referred to as ‘the ostensibly malefic.’ We’ll get back to
you when we have a new term for ‘the good guys.’"
Mr. Queenan, a satirist and freelance writer, is the author of
numerous books. His memoir, "Closing Time," will be published this
month by Viking.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
