Fighting Words: 
The War Over Language

by Jon Hooten

Mine — perhaps, ours — is the first American generation that has yet to experience a full-blown, machine-gun shooting, prisoner-taking, horror-story war. 

We youngsters sit wide-eyed while our shaky grandfathers and crusty old uncles tell tales of enemy occupation, dead buddies, pretty gals and the joy of a fresh Lucky Strike on a quiet rainy afternoon. To those born in the late 1960s and beyond, Nazis are nothing but cultural extremists (of the “femi-” or ’soup” varieties), Vietnam makes a good setting for a summer blockbuster, and the Battle of the Bulge is a corny baby boomer punch line. Simply, the realities of the nation’s major wars have been lost on one — going on two and three — generations of Americans.

That’s not to say that my generation has not lived through skirmishes, conflicts and appalling battles. Those of us sitting in high school during the winter of 1991 watched the air strikes on Baghdad through the glassy eyes of CNN, with Peter Arnett and Wolf Blitzer calling the play-by-play. As Desert Storm eventually became known as the “Gulf War,” many of us wondered if this was the future of the genre that we had read about in 11th grade-history class. 

From now on, it seemed, war would be a few nights of superpower smart-bombing and long-range tanks lobbing shells into ragtag militias commanded by egomaniacal dictators. It hardly seemed worthy of the designation “war.”

Those of us who grew up after Vietnam simply cannot comprehend the dread that shaped older generations of Americans. Our experience of the Gulf War was an acutely sterile encounter. We watched replays of laser-guided missiles entering bunker windows, but seldom were we exposed to the sights of actual human collateral. Though tens — hundreds — of thousands of Iraqi casualties resulted, the images of precision war games grossly outnumbered the news clips of war’s grisly human cost. Since many of us have not experienced the sights and sounds of war firsthand, we think about war rather thoughtlessly.

Indeed, in our dearth of wartime experience, we have learned to deploy the images of war casually. The words of war were once the moral and emotional defense of the nation, corresponding with the real memories and motivations of an embattled citizenry. As war became less messy and more distant, the language of war invaded the common lexicon of America. Though you may have never noticed it, the extra-ordinary metaphor of war has infiltrated the everyday. (Can you count how many times I’ve used “war words’ in this very paragraph?)

Our popular culture thinks nothing of invoking the language of conflict to describe most any topic. Pick up the morning’s paper and browse through the headlines: “Mayor Defends New Budget.” “Media Blitz Saves Kidnapped Girl.” “Farmers Battle Summer Drought.” “Browser War Heats Up.” “Champ’s Left Hook Right on Target.” 

Consider again the numerous, non-militant ways in which the word “bomb” is used: “Frat brothers get bombed on a Saturday night.” “Your new car is ‘da bomb.” “Did you see that comedian bomb on Letterman last night?” “The quarterback threw a long bomb to win the game.”

While we have haphazardly sprinkled our language with war’s metaphors, is it possible that we have collectively forgotten how to think clearly about the literal phenomenon? Can the collective linguistic turn from the literal to the metaphorical be without consequence?

Throughout history, wars have usually followed a certain pattern: They have generally involved elaborate, enduring campaigns between at least two somewhat equal forces; they have resulted in mass casualties; and — this is the most important part — they have some sort of conclusion. That’s no Oxford New World definition, but it seems to be a characterization on which most could agree, at least in the conventional sense of the phenomenon.

Definition aside, the latter half of the 20th century has seen a proliferation of non-war-like wars. The war on poverty that Lyndon Johnson waged in the ’60s was an elaborate public policy initiative. The war on drugs that swelled in the ’70s and ’80s became a tsunami of agencies, non-profit organizations, police action and international diplomacy. The Cold War, fought with national ideologies, economic posturing and infinite defense budgets, festered without any combat or mass casualties (at least among the superpowers) throughout the latter half of the 20th century before finally coming to a head in the mid-’80s. 

Now, after a decade’s respite of new wars, we have another one on our hands: the war on terrorism.

After that inconceivable morning in September 2001, our media-sated political culture was quick to place the blame on those radicals who have become known as ‘the terrorists.” Soon after, the war on terror was a go. President Bush promptly assembled his posse to round up the scoundrels who had done this — “Wanted,” we were told, ‘dead or alive.” The weeks and months following that day were a slow and deliberate escalation of the war on terrorism, beginning internally with beefed up airports and FBI round-ups, then spreading — in a violent and explicit way — abroad in Afghanistan.

For several weeks, while the United States bombed that impoverished faraway land, the “war on terrorism” became known as the “war on Afghanistan.” Quickly, this new war began to look like a war that the president’s father fought 10 years earlier. Though similar to the Gulf War in many ways, the mission in Afghanistan was very different. While Bush the Elder relied heavily on turkey-shoot combat fought from above, George W. sent in massive numbers of ground troops to hunt down out the evil ones. 

A wobbly alliance with the locals in Afghanistan was also formed, so that fewer body bags would be sent back to the States full of our brothers and sisters. (Who knows how many Northern Alliance fighters were buried in their native soil.) And while his father had the modest goal of expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Bush the Younger went after the whole falafel — rounding up all the Al Qaeda and Taliban evil-doers he could find.

After the fighting in Afghanistan simmered down, the popular rhetoric of national affairs shifted away from geographic specifics to the more general “war on terrorism.” No longer involving specific battles or well-defined goals, this war quickly began to look similar to other drawn-out wars with which my generation is familiar. 

In 1981, first lady Nancy Reagan boldly advised us first-graders to “Just Say No.” (Abbie Hoffman is widely reported to have said, “To tell a drug addict to “just say no” is like telling a manic depressive to “just cheer up.”") Soon after, President Reagan instigated the all-out war on druggies. By 1988, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act had set its national sites on both the supply and demand of illegal substances in the United States. Though the DEA had been on the scene since 1973, Ron and Nancy took seriously the evil scourge that they saw infecting America’s children. The war on drugs was born, has thrived for more than 15 years, and continues today with an overall federal budget of $19.2 billion.

But last time I checked, people still buy and use drugs with relative ease. Though the statistics of drug use wax and wane like a Santa Cruz tide, it is safe to say that the war on drugs has not been won. What’s more, the war is not a winnable affair. The war on drugs is a war on a perpetual opponent. Unlike a conventional war, there will be no Normandy or Hiroshima, no crucial turning point or day of victory when all the pot heads and speed freaks will finally surrender.

Returning to our impromptu definition, there is no doubt that the war on drugs largely fits the characterization of conventional war. The national strategy has certainly been a strategic battle of wits between two equally matched opponents (as the drug complex still manages to outfox the government with regularity and sophistication). This war has also lasted for more than two decades, and nobody doubts that real casualties have ensued, both domestically and abroad. The question remains, however, if this war will in fact ever come to completion. Can it be won?

If we put our heads to it, we will quickly recognize that a “war” of this type is nothing but a grand metaphor, a riding crop with which to whip patriotic Americans into action. In the case of the drug war, the United States has moved from metaphor to militarized efforts in the attempt to alter its citizens’ habits. While these symbolic, rhetorical wars may seem to have few negative consequences, the conjuring of war’s images, passions and emotions has real effects. We are racing toward a finish line that doesn’t exist.

The language of war, in all its urgency and obligation, will always motivate the patriotic and righteous. The metaphor necessarily creates an enemy, which, when characterized as such, becomes equally entrenched in the language of offense and defense. At its dark heart, a war demands division and opposition. Right vs. wrong. Good vs. evil.

Like the war on drugs, the war on terrorism is another overarching metaphor. Terrorism, like drug use, is an act unique to humanity, an action which will always be with us. To war against terrorism is to war against an enemy that does not exist in only one place, that cannot be controlled by laws, that will perpetually be reborn in creative and wily ways. Terrorism grows out of the fecund social and cultural and economic and religious and psychological slough that is civilization. Like the drug war, the war on terrorism can never be won.

Further, the White House appears to be a little confused about what sort of war it is indeed fighting. The administration recognizes that the war on terrorism is akin to the Cold War, explaining that no “silver bullet” is going to make terrorism go away, but that the pressure will be steadily applied until terrorism is “rooted out.” The difference, however, between the Cold War and the war on terrorism is that the former was between two nations with distinct policies and practices and known quantities and qualities. The war on terrorism could not be further from that tidy arrangement.

By definition, terrorism is a concept or category that describes human actions. In most any dictionary, you will find no examples of what terrorism must be in order to be considered as such. Under the entry of ‘terrorism,” you will not find “hostage-taking,” ’suicide-bombing” and ‘the throwing of Molotov cocktails.” Rather, you will find it described as systematic and violent acts to advance political ends. To war against terrorism, therefore, is to war against a classification, a description, a word. 

Tell me, how can bombs be dropped on a word?

At this point, you may be wondering: Doesn’t this guy know that the war on terrorism is actually a war on terrorists? That it is a war on their weapons supply, their finances, their training camps and the axis of evil that harbors them? Doesn’t he realize that this exercise in logic has nothing to do with the reality of reality?

Well, yes. And no. I am well aware that acts of terrorism do not commit themselves. Of course, terrorism requires the personnel, training and weapons that makes violence possible; limiting all of that should therefore logically decrease the instances of terrorist acts. However, the United States must realize that this war — while focused against terrorists, their weapons, etc. — is shaped and fought through the way we speak and write about it. 

Fighting terrorism is different than fighting cavities. It is not a localized menace that can be brushed away or filled with lead. On Sept. 9, 2001 — two days before the events that sparked the Bush’s new war — Alan Block wrote in Pravda, “When the metaphorical use of the term [war] is common and seldom challenged, resistance to actual war becomes more difficult and uncommon.” Eventually, the verbal sparring becomes literal bombing.

When we generalize about the evils of terrorism, we shroud the faces and politics and religion behind the acts. That which motivates the militants has become opaqued by the wordiness of bumper sticker aphorisms and campaign stump speeches. While the war on terrorism has set its sites on the perpetrators and mechanisms therein, it has ignored that which initially provokes the violence. As a damning result, the evil (if you will) will always be with us. As long as the seeds of terrorism — ignorance, injustice, exploitation — are perpetually planted by the careless hand of the superpowers, the weeds of violence will continue to steal nutrients from the fruits of civilization.

Politicians, prosecutors and preachers alike invoke moving imagery of cosmic battles of good and evil. Yet, many public figures use this language in knowingly figurative ways. I get the sense, though, that our current president takes seriously his war on evil, that with enough bombs, with plenty of firepower, and if right the people can be killed, then the axis of evil will fall. He does not seem to realize that evil is perennial, that the death of one season’s crops will only fertilize the next season’s seedlings. By creating martyrs of the evil-doers, he is signing the marching orders of their followers and inspiring a new impassioned generation of freedom fighters.

I would like nothing more than to eradicate terrorism, along with poverty, hunger, oppression and injustice. But invoking the language of war does more damage than it prevents. To war against anything will eventually allow the metaphors to become realities. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that words have consequences. Words persuade, encourage and tyrannize. They convey power, passion and persecution. When we invoke the language of war, figurative battles against finances become literal battles against financiers. Symbolic warfare against weapons supplies becomes bloody warfare against weapons suppliers. While we arm ourselves for war, the roots of the violence go ignored, growing deeper into the fertile soils of culture and power.

Ten years ago, the Gulf War was designed to somehow eradicate the threat that Saddam Hussein posed in the Middle East. Ten years later, he has resurfaced as some sort of a potential threat. As I write this piece, the nation again finds itself on the brink of an armed conflict with Iraq, and in the fervor of the war on terrorism, Bush awaits the political opportunity to pounce on this nation and its leader who may or may not be supplying weapons to terrorists. Instead of using legitimate means to approach the situation (e.g. U.N. inspections and/or diplomacy), Bush is warming up the war crafts to take matters into his own gun-slinging hands.

In a famous article that appeared just before the first Gulf War, linguist George Lakoff wrote, “It is important to distinguish what is metaphorical from what is not. Pain, dismemberment, death, starvation, and the death and injury of loved ones are not metaphorical.” Acts based on a metaphor will mirror the metaphor. Warring words will become warring deeds. Clearly, the metaphorical war on terrorism might just become a very real attack on Iraq, with real casualties and consequences.

When war is accepted in any form, it can be accepted in all forms. Oscar Wilde wrote in 1891, “As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.” Only when we choose to not invoke the words of war to address social ills will we begin to solve the problems that lead to violence. More often than not, we are our own worse enemy.