Language Barrier: "War"

Increasingly I feel I am a foreigner in my own country, these United States, and language has much to do with it. The words coming out of the mouths of people here are in English, but they make sense only to madmen or Martians. Definitions have been subverted by politicians, private interests, and lazy journalists to the point where I can no longer have a conversation with my fellow citizen, without feeling like we are talking about two entirely different things. The sheer number of people who naively parrot this language in their thoughts and speech has a resulted in a great wall, a kind of language barrier, surrounding the majority and leaving only a dejected, disaffected, disenchanted minority banished outside its walls, the only people left who care about truth, justice, and empathy for others. With these posts I intend to lob a few literacy bombs over the wall, in hopes of shaking a few people out of their ignorance and having some company outside this barrier. Maybe someday there will be more of us outside than in.

“War.” Where do I begin with the misuse of this word? I find it everywhere I look; our “leadership” for several administrations have wrapped themselves in it to one extent or another. There is the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Poverty, and of course the War on Terror. Our leaders want us to think in terms of fighting, and take advantage of our baser instincts. They want us to see the world as Us vs. Them and accept extreme views and blunt policies out of fear that anything else might doom us to failure. But the U. S. A. was not built as much out of fear as it was out of curiosity and by questioning authority. It was built by keeping deceitful, power-hungry people in check, not by caving into their every provocation. “War” is their cry whenever they do not get their way.

So why are people so willing to quiet themselves (or inflame their hatred) at the use of this word? What does it mean to them? It seems people have this abstract notion of war, that it is a solution to a problem, that honor and glory and adventure are involved. The opponents in a war are seen as less than human, and allies are seen as children or befuddled neighbors who must be rescued. Politicians promote and take advantage of these oversimplified ideas, but where do people get them in the first place?

To their credit, many writers and film-makers are providing more accurate and all-inclusive views of war than we’ve probably ever seen before, but there still is a prevalence of histories, documentaries, and fiction that romanticize war as some kind of rite of passage, or filial duty, or religious crusade. And for people who do not pursue reason and critical thought as much as they should, this is as far as they get into the collective understanding of war. They get no further than the wars against goblins and trolls in fantasy literature, or the old propaganda left over from World War II, the “good” war that let the notions of power and superiority go to the head of nearly every President since. People get the idea that the U. S. righted the wrongs of the world by kicking their butts and setting things straight, but that is simply not the case. As in all things, the truth is complicated, and people are either too lazy or too distracted to concern themselves with matters of complexity.

No matter how much our leaders try to convince you that a war can in any way be precise or methodical or necessary, do not believe them. War is at best a punch in the eye, at worst a hurricane. Have you ever known anyone to respond positively to being punched, or to having their home destroyed? (If you think a black eye is what you need to set you straight, then you are in an abusive relationship and need to run like hell for the nearest police station or battered women’s shelter.) There is an entire gaming industry (both paper and electronic games) that fosters this odd belief that a war is about strategic use of resources, and not about women being tortured and raped, or children being forced to murder their own families, or about hatred being inflamed over generations for no other reason than to give power to the small group of individuals in control.

It’s revealing of people’s ignorance then, when they use war as a metaphor for dealing with societal problems. Tell me, can you accept the idea of nuking the nation’s illiteracy? Does this sound like the proper way to educate people? How about my favorite war, the War on Drugs. What are we fighting again? The little dime bags of drugs themselves, or the troubled people who can’t stop taking them? Use of the war metaphor is an excuse for leadership to institute blunt and misguided policies, and to then deflect criticism when those policies inevitably fail. How dare we criticize a War President! The troops need your support! (As though you weren’t already praying for your friends, neighbors, and children to come home safe and unharmed.) Personally, I can understand declaring war on a sovereign nation, but I can’t reconcile this idea of declaring war on a concept, or a piece of merchandise, or on people’s desperation or ignorance.

War, as I understand the word, is a disaster of epic proportions, a mass murder. (For all of you religious folk out there, that’s the Sixth Commandment being broken, often in the name of the Lord. Did any of you listen in Sunday school?) Homes, entire cities and countries are burned or demolished. Government and private industry are corrupted. Education is neglected. The living wish they were dead. And histories, when not romanticized for personal or political gain, never look kindly on them.

Perhaps then, it is not the word “war” that I need to explain my understanding of, but the difference between the words “on” and “of,” for it’s my belief that the United States truly is engaged in Wars of Terror and of Drugs.