Politicians: Slogans, Lies and Semantics 

Politicians are in general not inclined to inform or to clarify, and for good reason. This instructive recourse presupposes well-grounded and clearly defined worthy undertakings or policies, demands patience and time and results more often than not in a diversity of opinion rather than in an unqualified acceptance of the proposed. Since most weighty political matters are more grand scheme than detailed program and since time is almost always of the essence and controversy is best avoided, a tactic other than instructive persuasion has clearly been in order.

Keen students of human inclinations that they are, our world’s politicians have also long noted that most of their lesser fellow humans respond more readily and more favorably to simple assertions expressed briefly than to thought-demanding exegetic wordiness. Little wonder that slogans became their mantras and particularly so in times of crises. Such has been no less the case in America. In his contribution to this dubious but effective mode of persuasion, George W. Bush did more than just fall in line and keep in step. Wanting in language skills, he came into his own in a stubborn cultivation of slogans. Two causes were thereby well-served: catch phrases not only afforded an effective political language but also helped him compensate for his obvious ineptitude in normal communication. Indeed, Bush’s naturally disjointed, telegrammatic mode of thinking may also have found a consonant mode of expression in the halting and broken flow of slogan language.

The favorite of Bush’s litany of slogans have been: Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction threatens the U.S.A.; Hussein’s harboring of branches of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda poses a world-wide threat; we will bring Democracy and Freedom to Iraq; we will not cut and run; we will stay the course; we will succeed unless we quit; we will stand down as they stand up; we are winning, we will win; we will lead the world to freedom. With the exception of his references to weapons of mass destruction, to the threat of terrorism and to Democracy and Freedom, all of Bush’s favorite mantras, unqualified as they have remained, are clearly nothing more than simplistic jingoistic pep talk.

Deliberately stoking fear of nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction and fear of Islamic terrorism, Bush was able to persuade the majority of his fellow Americans to condone his pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. That Iraq proved to have no weapons of mass destruction and that Bin Laden and his evil and freedom-hating Islamic terrorists had never played footsie with Hussein never morally ruffled Bush or any member of his entourage of tough-fibered neo-conservatives. That such could have been the case was enough to justify a pre-emptive strike. Furthermore, once lies have served their purpose, they should conveniently be forgotten. This had become Bush’s modus operandi.

Bush’s evangelistic insistence that it was God’s will that America gift Iraq, indeed the  entire world, with Democracy and Freedom, was no less a deliberate self-serving verbal camouflage than his weapons of mass destruction. Laudable pretext, like weapon lie, served its purpose predictably well. Most of America’s many God-fearing citizens believed, or wanted to believe, their president, and supported their country’s noble crusade, and the doubters–those who knew or suspected that Bush and his neo-conservatives were actually less interested in lofty causes than in the removal of a regime that no longer served America’s political purposes, in the establishment of an imperialistic foothold in Islam’s troubled Middle East and in the control of Iraq’s oil fields–chose discreetly to maintain their silence, that is, until sociopolitical chaos enveloped Iraq. By then too, the words Democracy and Freedom had, self-servingly for Bush and his entourage, slipped in meaning from their initially implied high expectations to nothing more than a government able to govern and to provide security. This semantic slippage, a determined effort to save face and to failure-proof, became a White House trend with Iraq’s decline from chaotic strife to civil war.

The American army’s lightning thrust did awe and shock, Hussein’s puny army folded in a matter of weeks, and Bush in military garb and on a battleship off the Pacific coast–a grand Hollywoodesque photo opportunity–smiling smugly, proclaimed “mission accomplished.” This, unfortunately, was nothing other than the beginning of the stream of brash lies, pious hopes and deliberate semantic slippage that was to follow as matters in Iraq quickly went from bad to worse.

Despite Iraq’s increased sectarian friction, the escalation of terrorism and the rapidly growing number of American and Iraqi casualties, Bush, bolstered by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, continued to reiterate his favorite cheerleader slogans, albeit with less gusto and shifting emphasis. In reaction to America’s growing disapproval of his imperiled Iraqi adventure, Bush’s once emphatically proclaimed “we will not cut and run” gave way in emphasis to a more modest and accommodating “we will stand down as they stand up,” and his once stubbornly maintained “we will stay the course”  became an acknowledgment of the necessity  of “a change in tactics.” “We will stand down as they stand up,” Bush’s new slogan, both slyly threw that ball of responsibility into the court of the Iraqis and conveniently lowered the definition of victory. And Bush’s “change in tactics” fuzzily defined by his new and self-cancelling catchwords “consistency” and “flexibility” demonstrated his characteristic lack of respect for the intelligence of the American people.

Bush’s lack of respect for the intelligence  of the American public is reflected even more in his consistent devious use of language. Emotionally distressing or morally unacceptable situations or acts are commonly wrapped in innocuous verbal camouflage. By designating questionable civilians enemy combatants, the White House legitimized its illegal imprisonments in Guantanamo; the kidnapping, spiriting abroad, torture and interrogation of alleged terrorists became “extraordinary renditions”; torturing suspects to obtain confessions became “information extraction”; a life-threatening dunking to compel confessions simply became “water boarding”; the killing of civilians and the destruction of non-military properties customarily became “collateral damage”; unpopular military escalation became a less offensive “surge”; and sharply defined “victory” and “defeat” became blander and less specific “success” and “failure.” Clearly, to further befuddle and not to enlighten, Bush’s pro-war arguments in time began to be peppered indiscriminately with such non-defined pseudo-technical terms as road-map, timetables, milestones and benchmarks, and even such commonplace words as win, lose, success, hero, patriotism, justice, friend, foe, torture and terrorism became self-servingly elusive in their meaning. This verbal campaign was remarkably successful in its intended rousing of the emotions and the stultifying of the wits of a majority of Americans for more than three years.

With disaster staring him in the face after three years of combat, Bush continued to insist that America would succeed unless it quit and that it was in fact winning in Iraq. But the words “success” and “winning” changed semantically, and for good reason: the possibility of the Democracy and Freedom once envisaged and promised had become a virtual impossibility. And Bush’s latest brash and shifty pronunciamentos–we are going to stay in Iraq to finish the job; we will stay as long as our friends the Iraqis want us to stay; victory in Iraq is crucial to the defeat of terrorism, the calling of our time; we want to continue to work with the sovereign government of Iraq and we will achieve our mutual aims; to leave before finishing the job is to dishonor those who have sacrificed the lives for a just cause, Al Qaeda is on the rise; they can’t intimidate America; victory is still achievable–are little more than the desperate ranting and pleading of a man who suspects that all will soon be lost.

Regarding Iraq, America’s cause, reasons, planning and leadership were all wrong. Our hopes, fed by empty promises and edged by cultivated fear, were pie in the sky. We have been fighting a bogus war on two fronts–with devious slogans on the home front and with devastating weapons in Iraq–and after almost four years of fumbling and bumbling we are still mired in political and military muck. Like Vietnam, Iraq was clearly a misadvised misadventure. Vietnam ended in a costly disaster and Iraq is ending in a costly disaster–calamities for both invader  and invaded. More than three thousand American soldiers have already lost their lives in Iraq, more than twenty thousand have already been wounded, the war has already cost America hundreds of billions of dollars and American has lost the respect of the world-at-large. And Iraq has become a dangerous wasteland, more than six hundred thousand of its citizens have been slaughtered, and several million have become displaced persons. All this for at best, a Pyrrhic American victory, or at worst, another humiliating American defeat.

So much for America’s self-righteous flag-waving and gun-toting imperialism, so much ! and gullibility of the American people. How many more Pied Piper deciders will seduce America? How many more asinine ventures are necessary before adolescent
America becomes mature?

Hope springs eternal in the human breast! The floundering ship that is America may yet right itself

Joseph MIleck, Professor Emeritus

German Department

University of California, Berkeley