THE "WAR" ON TERROR

From AlterNet, another essay from Berkeley linguist George Lakoff:

How Bush's War on Terror Became Real

The war metaphor is still intimidating progressives. To come out against "staying the course" is to be called unpatriotic, weak, and defeatist. To say, "no, we're just as strong, but we're smarter" is to keep and reinforce the war metaphor, which the conservatives have a patent on.

It is time for progressives to jettison the war metaphor itself. It is time to tell some truths that progressives have been holding back on. What has worked in stopping terrorism is just what has worked in stopping international crime -- like the recent police work in England. What has failed is the war approach, which just recruits more terrorists. In Iraq, the war was over when we defeated Saddam's army. Then the occupation began. Our troops are dying because they are not trained be occupiers in hostile territory on the cusp of a civil war.

Bush is an occupation president, not a war president, and his war powers should be immediately rescinded. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to do just that (H.R. 5875) should be taken seriously and made the subject of national debate.

I am suggesting a conscious discussion of the war metaphor as a metaphor. The very discussion would require the nation to think of it as a metaphor, and allow the nation to take seriously the truth of our presence in Iraq as an occupation that must be ended. You don't win or lose an occupation; you just exit as gracefully as possible.

Click here for the rest.

Fighting a war against terrorism is like fighting a war against karate or fisticuffs. That is, terrorism is a tactic, a crime, not an opposing army or the nation state that sponsors it. We've never really been in a "war" against terrorism. I mean, okay, as Lakoff observes, the Iraq invasion was war, but that was against Iraq, not terrorism, despite what Bush has repeatedly asserted. The whole "war on terror" has been a con job from the get-go.

I would add to Lakoff's point about treating terrorism as a crime, the notion that we must also seek to dry up Islamic extremism's well of support: if we don't change the way we do business with the rest of the world, treating human beings as resources to be harshly exploited, we'll always have to deal with terrorism. That's the only way. Beyond that, however, Lakoff is, as usual, right on. Any discussion of the "war on terrorism" must have the concept of metaphor inserted. This'll definitely be helpful even at kitchen table conversations, but if somehow politicians and pundits start talking this way, it stands to abolish forever the spell the right wing has cast over America.

Lakoff makes it sound so easy.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$