Spreading faster among blue-state politicians than the exit polls from Ohio is the wisdom dispensed by the book, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate. In this timely tome, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff observes that the mental context—or “frame”—in which we place issues can determine our attitude toward them. Recently, Lakoff lectured Democratic leaders how best to “frame” the party’s core issues to attract average Americans bamboozled by the rhetorical tricks of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh. For instance, Lakoff suggests they advocate for “poison-free communities,” redefine trial lawyers as “public protection attorneys” and affirm taxation as “paying your membership fee in America.” Noting conservative successes with such terms as “tax relief” and the Kerry-bashing “permission slip,” Lakoff warns that right-wingers are more proficient than liberals in using words to “draw you into their world view.”
I hope the Pentagon and State Department read Lakoff’s book. As I’ve argued before, words and concepts matter--especially when it comes to Iraq, where truth is not so much found as it is made: how America views the conflict will determine whether we win or lose it. So in a Lakoffian spirit, I’ve drawn up a short list of locutions that supporters of the war might use when speaking about Iraq.
To start with the obvious, instead of the term “occupation,” why not “liberation”—or, better yet, “reconstruction?” (“The Marines helped liberate Iraq, now they are reconstructing it.”)
Rather than “guerrillas;” “insurgents;” “militants,” and other euphemisms for nihilistic gunmen, we should use “paramilitaries.” After all, any time masked criminals and right-wing murderers launch assaults in Central or Latin American, the media and NGOs invariably call them “paramilitaries”—shouldn’t that designation hold true in Iraq? Why do “death squads” operate only where Spanish is spoken? Therefore, let us call the Sunni Triangle killers “right-wing paramilitary death squads.”
If that sounds too much like Soviet-era propaganda, we can distill the description to a single term that combines simplicity, familiarity and historical truth: fascists. For example, when some boor at a seasonal cocktail party starts sounding off about the “U.S. occupation” and the “Iraqi Resistance,” explain to him that “The democratic reconstruction of Iraq is progressing despite attempts by fascist killers to stop it.”
As for that term “Resistance,” we should consign it to the moral trash heap that is currently filling with DVDs of “Fahrenheit 9-11.” The truth is, the Iraqi people are under attack. Terrorists kill more civilians than they do Coalition troops. The real Resistance is Iraqi policemen, National Guard soldiers, ministers and bureaucrats in the Iraqi government, hundreds of grassroots politicians and every man and woman who votes on January 30. Iraq is not Star Wars, where the rebel “resistance” stands for freedom and democracy, and the Empire represents brutality and oppression. Taking Lakoff’s message to heart, we must stress a new framing narrative, one where Darth Vader plots his evil rebellion in a Ramadi safehouse, while Luke, Han, Leia and the gang ride point with the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
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