Words and their meanings
Cross-posted to Random Fate.
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
-Thomas Jefferson
The fact that “the people cannot be all, and always, well informed” is frequently taken advantage of by those who want to gain support for an endeavor that may require more than sound-bites to explain. Take the recent “surge” proposal from the Bush administration regarding troop increases in Iraq to gain victory. There are many deliberate choices being made in characterizing this supposedly new direction, including the uses of the words “strategy” and “surge” as descriptors of actions that are really “tactics” and “reinforcement” (avoiding committing the same sin by not using the word “escalation”).
People like to say, “now you’re arguing semantics,” but the meanings of the words used to explain ourselves and our thoughts are key to conveying the ideas, and choices are always made in our explanations. Occasionally, those choices are deliberate in the spin they impart.
strategy – Also, strategics. The science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.
In military usage, a distinction is made between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the utilization, during both peace and war, of all of a nation’s forces, through large-scale, long-range planning and development, to ensure security or victory. Tactics deals with the use and deployment of troops in actual combat.
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tactics – the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle.
The situation in Iraq has been markedly lacking in long-range planning and development, and what President George W. Bush described in his speech was a change in the small-scale, short-range disposition of forces and their methods.
surge – a strong, wavelike, forward movement, rush, or sweep.
The use of the word “surge” implies a rapid ramp-up with an equally rapid ramp-down.
Is this realistic, especially given that the new “strategy” is really what should have been done, and what I assumed was being done, all along?
We have been presented new tactics that will take a long time to accomplish the desired effects. They are being presented as a “new strategy” that is a “surge” possibly ending by the beginning of autumn.
The real plan that underlies the change in tactics has a chance to succeed. Unfortunately, the focus on spin has presented a nonsensical scenario to an American public that is rightly skeptical after so many unrealistic descriptions of the situation in Iraq.
Words and their meanings will come back to haunt those who misuse them.
3 Responses to “Words and their meanings”
Jack,
This smacks awfully of the “sheeple” argument I’ve seen repeatedly put forth over the last four years or so. The uninformed public, those who don’t read blogs, I guess, can’t be trusted to make informed decisions – because they don’t read blogs. Meh.
As for this:
I’d submit that the focus on “spin” works both ways – the spin of the left presents to the American public that Iraq is lost, beyond hope, and entirely the fault of the Bush administration, while the spin of the right posits that Iraq is in stasis, within hope, and subject to defeat only because of the nattering of the leftist politicians who once upon a time voted for the IWR, but retreat from it now because progress hasn’t suited their own time line.
Neither is accurate, of course, but if indeed “Words and their meanings will come back to haunt those who misuse them”, I hope the hauntings will assault the senses of lefties and righties both.
And let’s leave the sheeple out of it.
Respectfully,
Joe
Joe: Jack did not present the sheple argument, you did- which neatly illustrates his point.
BUT, most folk are sheep, lest they wd not continue to vote D&R alone, after decades of unmitigated failure, they wd not continue to go to church despite never getting their wishes granted, nor wd they do most of what they do in life, which is pointless, and mostl shallow.
What I’d like to hear from Jack, though, is what that REAL PLAN is. If there is one, he’s alone in knowing it, or how it could work.
Jack:
Great post.