What's in a name? (part 1)

The War on Terror is over. At least, Obama has told his top advisors and officials to stop using the term and instead use the phrase “Overseas Contingency Operations.” This is not the only name-change that Obama has put in place—in fact, it seems as if he is purposely trying to discard as many Bush-era phrases as quickly has he can. Today, I would like to discuss the lexicon of the Bush Administration, its effects on America, and why President Obama is so eager to move away from it. In particular, there are a few phrases I would like to discuss:

War on Terror—this is perhaps the most notable phrase of the Bush era, it is equally important to note how quickly Obama opted to change it. This phrase is designed to be a euphemism for Bush’s neoconservative approach foreign policy, which groups nations and peoples into clearly defined, black-and-white categories. “War” implies two distinct and well-defined sides engaged in open warfare so that one side will ultimately obliterate the other. “Terror,” of course, is a reference to 9/11, the mere mention of which infuriated Americans a few years ago. The phrase helped to sell the war using an age-old fear-mongering technique: make something sound far more sinister and dire than it actually is.

It is no surprise to me that Obama wants to replace this with a more euphemistic phrase. First, the Iraq War is no longer a war in the traditional sense—it is much closer to a police action than anything else. Since Obama is focusing on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, he does not want to make it sound as if we have a full-fledge war on our hands. Still, there are some dangers to using euphemisms for armed conflicts—as Robert Heinlein points out (I’m paraphrasing) “You are just as dead in a police action as you are in a real war.” Even so, Obama’s term is far more accurate than Bush’s extreme-sounding “Global War on Terror.”

Axis of Evil—like “War on Terror,” this reinforces the neoconservative foreign policy stance. Bush used this term to describe Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. As Bush put it: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” To many Americans, the word “axis” still retains a negative connotation from the Axis Power of WWII, which was undoubtedly why Bush chose in included. Like “War on Terror,” the phrase is intended to sell the Iraq War and make the situation seem more extreme than it actually was. It is interesting to note that the three nations included in Bush’s axis are not even working together—North Korea has no affiliation with Iran or Iraq. Obama has never used this term, which is unsurprising since his foreign policy is far more diplomatic than Bush’s. Also, there is not longer any reason to portray Iraq as “evil” because it has undergone a regime change. Thus, “axis of evil” is more outdated than it is incompatible with Obama’s policies.

Tomorrow I will cover more terms used during the Bush years and discuss their significance.