Sunday, November 23, 2003
The "War On Terror"
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone complain about this before, but maybe it's just because I haven't been looking. Every time I hear the words "war on terror," I get this little nudge from the back of my head that says, "beware." The proper, grammatical way to say it would be "the war on terrorism," no that's not it, "the war on terrorists." "War on terror" sounds almost Orwellian to my ear, subliminally implying a fight against anything that causes fear, never mind that practically everything can cause fear, including niggly little things like civil liberties.
But the thing that surprises me is, everyone says "war on terror" now, and has been since September 11, 2001! I turn on the nightly news and I read "war on terror," I read it on news sites, and I even hear it on NPR of all places, which really should know better. Hell, the BBC uses it!
Every time I hear that damn phrase, with its obvious equating of terrorist with terror itself, I get the feeling that someone, probably schooled in marketing techniques, fashioned that phrase and let it loose into the air. Maybe I'm too sensitive to this sort of thing, but I can't help but think that if enough marketing majors and corporations think enough of it to make use of this kind of word-twisting in countless commercials throughout practically every major communications medium we have, then likely someone did the same thing here. It sounds too much like a brand name to me, like how "9-11" has become itself code for fear and the taking of any and all means to destroy its cause.
But the thing that bothers me most about the phrase? It empowers terrorists. When the people you're fighting against personify you as terror itself, you know you're doing something right. People who believe themselves agents of a higher, above-human power or quality are capable of doing things a human all by himself would never do. Companies know it, armies know it, fetishists know it (nothing against them, mind you, that's perhaps the only positive use of the phenomenon), the CIA knows it, whoever invented capital punishment knew it, the people who ran the Crusades certainly knew it, and, I'm certain, terrorists know it too.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone complain about this before, but maybe it's just because I haven't been looking. Every time I hear the words "war on terror," I get this little nudge from the back of my head that says, "beware." The proper, grammatical way to say it would be "the war on terrorism," no that's not it, "the war on terrorists." "War on terror" sounds almost Orwellian to my ear, subliminally implying a fight against anything that causes fear, never mind that practically everything can cause fear, including niggly little things like civil liberties.
But the thing that surprises me is, everyone says "war on terror" now, and has been since September 11, 2001! I turn on the nightly news and I read "war on terror," I read it on news sites, and I even hear it on NPR of all places, which really should know better. Hell, the BBC uses it!
Every time I hear that damn phrase, with its obvious equating of terrorist with terror itself, I get the feeling that someone, probably schooled in marketing techniques, fashioned that phrase and let it loose into the air. Maybe I'm too sensitive to this sort of thing, but I can't help but think that if enough marketing majors and corporations think enough of it to make use of this kind of word-twisting in countless commercials throughout practically every major communications medium we have, then likely someone did the same thing here. It sounds too much like a brand name to me, like how "9-11" has become itself code for fear and the taking of any and all means to destroy its cause.
But the thing that bothers me most about the phrase? It empowers terrorists. When the people you're fighting against personify you as terror itself, you know you're doing something right. People who believe themselves agents of a higher, above-human power or quality are capable of doing things a human all by himself would never do. Companies know it, armies know it, fetishists know it (nothing against them, mind you, that's perhaps the only positive use of the phenomenon), the CIA knows it, whoever invented capital punishment knew it, the people who ran the Crusades certainly knew it, and, I'm certain, terrorists know it too.
