Brainwashing the populace for war Using language to dress a fat, ugly pig In the present state of the world very little can polarize the political and social environment than what is happening in Iraq, concomitant in Afghanistan. I feel compelled to say "what is happening", since for many the language used during the "conflict" has been bloodied with rampant synonymy. For those against "what is happening" people name it the "attacks" on Iraq. For those who support the "attacks" the word "war" is used, and more so the nations are divested from the conversation and we hear, "war on terror". A more neutral term is "war on Iraq", but even the preposition used calls questions to mind. Is the war happening "in" Iraq, as more of a world-wide theatre, or is it happening "on" Iraq, a top-down assault that wreaks havoc on innocent citizens and so-called "militant" insurgents? The language used during warfare has done much to nullify opposition, engender support, enrage the citizenry and mislead the public into seeing conflict through the eyes of the aggressors and empathizing with those at ground zero of the conflict. In the modern age, one encrusted in the technological time of instant access to embedded journalism, the picture provided by increasingly accessible media has painted a thousand unequivocal words that do more to outshine propaganda and media language than never before. The age of "liberty cabbage" from World War II (in lieu of the German "sauerkraut") and "freedom fries" of the past several years can do little to convince the public that war is noble in the face of mass photographed and documented bloodshed in the name of the aggressor. But language rhetoric is still used to drive public opinion during warfare. In December 1984, Haig Bosmajian first harvested attention onto war linguistics in the Christian Century via an article entitled "Dehumanizing People and Euphemizing War", stating that, "one of the principal means through which the perpetrator will attempt to clear his conscience is by clothing his victim in a mantle of evil, by portraying the victim as an object that must be destroyed". George Orwell in 1984, reiterated in Bosmajian's article, contended that language, "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts". President Ronald Reagan used this tool effusively when in 1982 he called Marxism a "virus", and in 1983 popularized the Soviet Union as an "evil empire". He called communism "the focus of evil in the modern world", and that, "we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might". He finally vowed to fight the "communist cancer". Instantly and simultaneously, if successfully, the Soviet people were both humanized and dehumanized. The face of the "evil empire" was sculpted onto an unknown and foreign people and secondly was then open to aversion and willful aggression. There was precedent during the Vietnam war, when government officials talked of "regrettable by-products" (the term replaced presently by the somewhat muted "collateral damage"), they spoke of the civilians killed by mistake. Faceless masses under the umbrella of the enemy were no longer individuals, they were "regrettable" (that which is "too bad", "unfortunate") and "by-products" (commonly denoted as that which is sloughed off). Even killing the enemy has been softened; terms such as "neutralize", "liquidate" and "take them out" are frequently used. "Take them out" seems most pointed, since it clearly separates the amorphous "us" from the equally formless "them". Dichotomies are profitable antagonists. The phrase, "you are either with us or against us", that George Bush reiterated in 2001 quickly equated with, "you are either us or them". War legislation and strategy both efficiently reflect this misrepresentation of war. Reagan's administration renamed the MX-Missile, "the Peacekeeper", and the militaristic bombardiers that he funded in Nicaragua during the 1980s were called, "Freedom fighters", though in the nation they fought they were feared as bloodletting warmongers who destabilized an already impoverished nation. The world, "liberation", is often used in lieu of "war" or "combat". House Joint Resolution 114, on the heels of House Resolution 3162 (The USA Patriot Act), authorized in 2001 the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq, and this word appeared in reference to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991: "the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq". In order to cull domestic support for the attacking of Iraq (and in some ways Afghanistan), the glut of acts to begin war were subsumed under "Operation Iraqi Freedom". Although the inspiration for the attacks was to remove Saddam Hussein from power and to sever his ties to international terrorist activities, repeatedly found implausible, by coining the operation as that devoted to the "freedom of Iraqis", those that are against the warfare are publicly, if in ways only politically, are in support of the oppression on Iraq. But as mentioned earlier, photographs and unabashed anti-aggression writings have done a lot to damage the efficacy of the old-world euphemisms of war machinery. The frankness of neo-journalism can bolster support or opposition. In fact, a photograph of murdered civilians does not recall "collateral damage" from the mental lexicon if the term itself holds no psychological currency. And the euphemisms can quickly backfire. The sewage industry created a Name Change Task Force in 1990 to replace terminology for its effluent with more friendly words such as, "bioslurp", "nutri-cake", and the ultimately chosen, "biosolids". This act, alongside federal war policies and a host of others, codifies the awareness that the nomenclature drives public impressions. But we all know that "biosolids" are just plain shit, and no word can change that. What is unfortunate about the prevalence of linguistic mitigation is that it further disenfranchises the holders of public opinion from the reality of what is occurring. American culture is rich with frosting a dirty cake with, if not lies, then pure ignorance of actuality. McDonald's, and the entire fast food industry, is cleaning up its image after the 2004 film, Super Size Me, with a new ad campaign to emphasize healthful dining, salads and vegetarian burgers (!), in light of the disastrous impact the film will have on the consumer confidence for fast food. And the end result of dressing up this stinking pig leads inevitably to censorship. Not the censorship we think of documented in 1984 or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, but that where painting over of the causes and effects of behavior leads to ignorance. And with "as-it-happened" pseudojournalism superseding true, insightful reporting (perhaps to avoid bias or stepping on corporate toes) then the future of true information to the people is compromised. We are told that Iraqi civilians are, "collateral damage", when annihilated by indiscriminate bombs and that unseen evils that have yet to be enriched in the media are simply, "them". But the sanitization of the Iraq "attacks", "war", "conflict", "liberation" ad nauseum, is now turned back to those who promote them. "Regime Change 2004" is a popular phrase using Bushesque propaganda to warn the current administration that they are as vulnerable as their blood-stained metaphors. J. Everett R.