Doublespeak and the War on Terror

“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength”
-George Orwell, 1984

“Freedom has been attacked, but freedom will be defended”
-George W Bush, 2001 (Not, technically a Space Odyssey, but an odyssey none the less)


Writing for the Cato Institute, arguably a mostly Conservative-leaning think-tank, Timothy Lynch references Orwell’s seminal novel, 1984, citing the author’s creation of “doublespeak” and writing, “Doublespeak perverts the basic function of language, which is to facilitate a common understanding between human beings.” in his paper titled “Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism”

Essentially a litany of the abuses of power by the Bush II administration, Lynch cites where, time and again, the current administration has been able to sidestep laws, regulations and private rights previously thought unassailable, inalienable, by manipulating the very language used to create, grant and assure those laws, regulations and rights. In what can really only be seen as Orwellian, this administration has created such progressions as “material witness” to “enemy combatant” to “imperative security internee”, each time creating the new definition after the Supreme Court has stepped in declared the previous classification illegal. It’s kind of like opposite day, every day, these days.

Another interesting point brought up by Lynch, if I can be so bold as to use so euphemistic a descriptor as “interesting”, is this government’s manipulation of the meaning of “terrorist”. Dictionary.com defines the word as: A person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism; A person who terrorizes or frightens others; One that engages in acts or an act or terrorism. But, hey, that’s just a dictionary, and the only thing you get from reading books is learning. According to the Bush II administration, “terrorists” now include anti-war demonstrators, political activists, a Catholic nun, drug addicts/users, and, among others, just about anyone flying commercial airlines these days as federal air marshals, needing to meet quotas of “suspicious persons”, will, apparently, enter just about anyone into their databases as potential terrorists.

However, perhaps the most startling and frightening revelation in Lynch’s paper is when he writes about the president’s use of the word “freedom” to frame the national debate in terms of freedom v. terror. In this way, Lynch argues, Bush is able to equate freedom with power in that he, Bush, and parts of government need to expand their power, be granted new powers if they are to combat terror. In other words, freedom is good, terror is bad and the only way to defeat terror is by spreading freedom, and the only way to do that is through unchecked power. Amazing.

Clear and concise, well-researched, Lynch’s paper is clean and neat, not partisan and, if possible, not political as it sheds a moral light on the so-called values of our current administration. I believe that Lynch in particular, and the Cato Institute in general represent true Conservative ideals, a label that this administration has slapped on its lapel underneath its American flag pin.

Link here: www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp98.pdf

Osama bin Laden, Ultimate Puppet Master?

John Tierney’s Op-Ed in NYT, titled: “Osama’s Spin Lessons” 12 September, 2006



Ronald Wardaugh writes about what he refers to as an “interventionist” approach to sociolinguistics as being one that examines language used by people in power, and “how even those who suffer as a consequence fail to realize how many things that appear to be ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ are not at all so. They are not so because it is power relations in society that determine who gets to say what and who gets to write what.”

If Wardaugh is correct in his theory that those who are not in power, in other words those who do not get to say and write what they want, are unaware that their very language is being used against them, then according to Tierney’s article, George W Bush is the unwitting puppet of Osama bin Laden, and it that is the case, then according to critical discourse theory, that makes bin Laden the ultimate master of power and politics, at least when it comes to his relationship with the US.

Tierney argues that by engaging Al Queda in the first place, the Bush II administration paid them the ultimate compliment; it made AQ appear as not only a legitimate threat, but one that had worldwide implications, one with armies spread across the world, ready to strike at any moment. This was not the case, Tierney writes, but by using a seething hatred of America and anything Western amongst mostly poor Muslims, bin Laden cast himself and AQ in a jihadic struggle for world domination which only served to bolster his image and the ranks of AQ.

By sitting in a case, presumably, somewhere in the middle of apparently nobody knows where, and releasing even old video footage to the world, OBL is able to bait the Bush administration into taking the hook and running with it. Everytime someone within the administration cites OBL or, better yet, quotes him, and even, as Tierney points out, uses the same language, that person simply gives more credence and hence more power to OBL.

Tierney points out that bin Laden’s language and tactics prompted George W Bush to proclaim that we, presumably meaning the so-called “free world”, or the West, but in reality probably means just the US, are in a worldwide war with terrorists and that “We will accept nothing less than complete victory” To this Tierney writes, “When you define victory that way, when you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could. You can’t completely stop terrorism, but you can scare people into giving up liberties, wasting huge sums of money and sacrificing more lives than would be lost in a terrorist attack.”

So, while some have argued that Bush is manipulating the meaning of the word freedom, it appears that he, in turn, is being manipulated by OBL. If the theories of Wardaugh and CDA are correct, and Tierney’s article is on the money, then where does that put us, those who are now apparently at least two steps removed from being able to say and write what we want?