Sigh. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve known for decades that governments misuse language. In fact, it’s become something of a hobby for me. The first time I noticed this maiming of words was during my Peace Corps training decades ago. Midway through the 12-week training, the honchos took a couple of guys aside and told them they had been “selected out.” “Wow!” I thought. Some special honor is being bestowed on them. They’ve been “selected!” As it turns out, being selected out meant being shown the door, dumped, evicted, given the bum’s rush. Peace Corps leaders simply couldn’t bring themselves to state it plainly.
Gabon RPCV Bob Cuddy writes: New name for war, same old language abuse
Bob Cuddy: New name for war, same old language abuse
Bob Cuddy - bcuddy@thetribunenews.com
Finally, some bipartisanship from Washington! Agreement by both major parties on a major issue involving government interaction with the citizenry.
Apparently Democrats agree with Republicans that language should be used to obfuscate.
I cite as Exhibit A their new name for the “War on Terror.”
“Overseas Contingency Operation.”
Say what?
It’s true: The Pentagon has hacked up an e-mail that says, in effect, “This administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror.’ Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’ ”
Sigh. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve known for decades that governments misuse language. In fact, it’s become something of a hobby for me.
The first time I noticed this maiming of words was during my Peace Corps training decades ago. Midway through the 12-week training, the honchos took a couple of guys aside and told them they had been “selected out.”
“Wow!” I thought. Some special honor is being bestowed on them. They’ve been “selected!”
As it turns out, being selected out meant being shown the door, dumped, evicted, given the bum’s rush. Peace Corps leaders simply couldn’t bring themselves to state it plainly.
When those of us who had not been selected out arrived in Gabon, we were taken to a jungle warehouse full of canned food that had somehow landed there through the machinations of the former Peace Corps director, a one-time Army officer.
One of the boxes was filled with small cans stamped “pan-coated chocolate disks.” We took one of those government-issue mini-can openers, peeled back the lid, and peered inside. There we saw M&M’s, minus the m. We ended up calling them PCCDs until we finished them.
Over the years, I continued to collect examples of mangled language. It’s not difficult to do in my profession. I was alternately amused and bemused by what I came across.
Then I read George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” again. The master put it all in its proper sinister perspective.
“Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” he wrote.
Orwell wrote that in 1946, but, alas, it seems to hold true today as well, as “War on Terror” and “Overseas Contingency Operation” illustrate.
Take terror — please. The word has no meaning. It has as many definitions as there are people defining it. My wife wages a war on terror whenever she goes after the potato bugs that migrate into our house from the Arroyo Grande farm next door.
Terror is one of those words that can be kneaded into whatever definition you like. A few of the many others are “liberty,” “freedom,” “liberal” and “conservative.”
I once taught a course up north about the so-called “liberal media.” I began the two-night session by asking the class to define conservative, liberal and media. That took almost the entire first night, and we never did find a consensus.
Demagogues can take a loaded word and, by repeating it relentlessly to a public too frazzled to consider nuance and context, “defend the indefensible,” as Orwell wrote.
That’s exactly what the American government did in fighting its “war on terror” after 2001: It took away such bedrock American principles as the right to confront your accuser and being safe in your home from unreasonable search and seizure.
Who could object? After all, we were fighting terror.
So when the Obama administration decided to drop the phrase, there was reason to hope. But what they have come up with is as bad, if not worse.
What does “operation” mean in this context? What does the government mean by “contingency”? Only “overseas” is clear, and even then Obama doesn’t tell us what part of overseas he means. Afghanistan? Canada? Lichtenstein?
“Everywhere” is the most likely, though unnerving answer to that question.
An “overseas contingency operation” means nothing and everything. As citizens, we need to keep a close eye on the people who are carrying forward this old caper under its not-so-shiny new banner.
