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?