The
language of war fascinates me. I was reading President Obama’s
response to Donald Trump on whether Obama “gets it” when
it comes to the threat of terrorism and came across this passage:
“Someone
[Donald Trump] seriously thinks that we don’t know who we are
fighting? If there is anyone out there who thinks we are confused
about who our enemies are — that would come as a surprise to
the thousands of terrorists who we have taken
off the battlefield.”
That’s
such a curious phrase: “terrorists who we have taken off the
battlefield.” As if the United States has simply evacuated
them or relocated them instead of killing them.
I
think the distancing effect of air power has something to do with
this euphemistic language. The U.S. military “takes people off
the battlefield” rather than killing them, blowing them up, and
so on. Obama’s personality may also play a role: a rational
person, he’s been compared to the Vulcan Mr. Spock from “Star
Trek” in his coolly logical approach to war.
Perhaps
that coolly rational side, and not his preference to avoid terms like
“radical Islamic terrorism,” is what gets Obama into
trouble. Many Americans would prefer more directness, more passion,
even though such directness and passion is often the approach of
posturing chickenhawks. Consider the language of Bush/Cheney and all
their blustering about “wanted, dead or alive” and “the
axis of evil“ and “you’re either for us or against
us.” Bush/Cheney talked as if they had just walked off a
Western movie set after a gunfight, but both avoided the Vietnam War
when they were young men, with Cheney famously saying he had other,
more important things to do with his life. (Bush flew in the Texas
Air National Guard, apparently gaining a slot after his father pulled
some political strings.)
So,
what should Obama have said in place of “we’ve taken them
off the battlefield”?
Why
not be honest and say something like this? “I’m well
into the eighth and final year of my administration, during which
I’ve approved drone strikes and air raids that have killed
thousands of suspected and confirmed terrorists. Sure, we’ve
often missed some targets, killing innocent people instead, but hey —
war is hell. I’ve approved Pentagon budgets that each year
approach $750 billion, I’ve overseen the U.S. dominance of the
international trade in weapons, I continue to oversee an empire of
roughly 700 overseas U.S. bases. Some have even called me the
assassin
in chief,
and they’re right about that, because under my command deadly
drone strikes have increased dramatically. Meanwhile, we’ve
already made some 12,000
air strikes
against ISIS/ISIL. So don’t tell me, Mr. Trump, that I don’t
know who the enemy is. Don’t tell me I’m not willing to
murder terrorists whenever and wherever we find them, even when
they’re U.S. citizens and teenagers. Don’t tell me I
don’t get it.”
Those
words would be honest – though they’d really just scratch
the surface of the Obama-led efforts to secure the “Homeland.”
But instead Obama speaks of “taking” terrorists “off
the battlefield,” cloaking his administration’s violent
actions in a euphemistic phrase that would be consistent with angels
from on high coming down to lift terrorists off the battlefield to
some idyllic oasis.
Odd,
isn’t it, that so few Americans criticize Obama for his
murderous actions in overseas wars, but so many will criticize him
for not bragging and boasting about it.
Well,
if America is looking for a braggart, someone willing to boast about
himself, they have their man in Donald Trump. If they’re
looking for a new assassin in chief, they have their woman in Hillary
Clinton. And if they’re looking for fresh ideas, a new
strategy, a way to end our seemingly endless wars, they’re
simply out of luck this election season, unless you go to a
third-party candidate like Jill Stein.
In
these over-heated times, the chances of a third-party challenge with
substance are somewhere between nada and nil. In the United States
in 2016, war and weapons sales and imperial expansion will continue
to find a way, even as our leaders cloak their violent actions using
the most anodyne phrases.
C’est
la guerre.
