Doublespeak

by anna at 11:13 AM on September 25, 2005

Mr. Language Person must maintain a constant vigil against the vile encroachment of strange, Orwellian terminology into the public discourse. This is difficult because Mr. Language Person doesn't care about the government or policies or their wonks or pundits. And yet today, while working the Sunday puzzle, I decided to turn on the TV for my dose of hurricane news. Big blunder on my part.

Today the wonk-pundit's gabfest theme was something called "Gold Star Moms." These aren't to be confused with soccer moms, million mom marchers or mothers against drivers on crack. No, the Stars are moms whose sons have been cut down in the senseless Iraq quagmire.

The most famous of these, of course, is this Cindy Sheehan character. She's the one who camped out in style outside Bush's ranch, courtesy o' ANSWER, MoveOn and that too-much-time-on-its-hands crowd. Her full time job appears to be carping about the war to anyone willing to lend a microphone. Her speech has taken on a robotic quality; like someone is feeding her lines through a hidden earpiece. She made a point of slipping in how she and her ilk/handlers "support the troops" even though they vehemently oppose the war they are fighting and would like nothing better than to see their commander-in-chief have a heart attack while mountain-biking. This is oxymoronic and just plain moronic. You cannot pick and choose that way. As Bush himself once said, you're either with us or you're against us. There's no middle ground.

Next they trotted out an older looking Star Mom who really does "support the troops" and favors the goal-diverting war. Parroting such right-wing blowhards as Bill O-Reilly and Rush "80 mg will set you right" Limbo, she slips in the obligatory reference to "the war on terror" and its alleged link to the Iraq conflict. As Jaded Ju once put it, this is so wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to begin. First of all, there is no "war on terror." Terror is just an emotion like any others, a chemical reaction to stimuli. You can't wage war against that; you can wage against Wahibbi Muslim mass-murderers and all their sympathizers; or you could if you weren''t so busy with your petty vendetta against Sad Am.

Say what you will about him but Mr. Am ran a tighter ship than Mussolini. The oil pipelines flowed unobstructed. Had anyone tried to blow them up or otherwise mess with his cash cow and he would hunt them down and torture/kill them. If they died in the attack he'd kill their familes, burn down their homes and rape their wives and daughters. The only terrorism Sad Am tolerated was his own. And as a mostly secular Arab state, there wasn't much virulent Muslim extremism to contend with anyway. But with him and his regime long gone and only a childish, bickering void in its place, Iraq has acted like a Muslim exremist vacuum. They swarm across the Syrian border sporting their suicide belts and brandishing rocket-propelled grenades available on the streets of Baghdad for a song. Every day dozens of acts of terror are commited. The place has plunged into New Orleansean chaos, never to return to any semblance of normalcy. Thank to whom? Thanks to the terrorists the US invasion and occupation invited in. Will it ever end? No.

Some "war on terror" we're fighting over there, huh?