On War
Words are alive. Their meanings freely change, depending on what the person wants to say and how he wants to say it. This is how our language evolves; as people talk, more words come into use and older ones gradually fall into irrelevancy as people overuse those words. Language changes to fit society’s need and war words are no exception to this. Because the English language is like this, war words have been used to the point of irrelevancy and Americans have forgotten the literal meaning of war.
The problem is the word “war” is hard to define since it’s a word which stirs up great emotions. War can be defined easily enough; war is an undesirable event which creates destruction, ends civilizations, ruins lives, and forces change onto people. But many different people have very different ideas about how the event of war comes about, and these ideas depending on what circumstances these people live in, what experiences they’ve had with war, and other factors. There is no single definition of war which everyone can agree to.
A society which knows war fears it and avoids it as much as possible. They’ve seen what it does and “war” mentioned in its true context horrifies them. But what happens in a society which has no experience in war? Jon Hooten says in his article “The War Over Language” that this is the first American generation that has never known war. Because of this, he says our language regarding war has become sloppy and we may have forgotten what war actually is. This is true; politicians trying to euphemize the meaning of war have said many careless statements about it and the overall tolerance for violence is far too great. Hooten quotes Alan Block who says, “When the metaphorical use of the term [war] is common and seldom challenged, resistance to actual war becomes more difficult and uncommon.” Later in the essay, Hooten writes, “To war against anything will eventually allow the metaphors to become realities.”
However, Hooten uses the wrong examples to make his point. He writes, “Our popular culture thinks nothing of invoking the language of conflict to describe most any topic. Pick up the morning’s paper and browse through the headlines: ‘Mayor Defends New Budget.’ ‘Media Blitz Saves Kidnapped Girl.’” Do these headlines indicate a nation will go to war just because its civilians use terms the military also use? No. As these words are used they take on different meanings. Although the words are inaccurate (it would be more accurate to say the mayor asserts the new budget is worthwhile) they are brief and to the point. Nobody takes it as a message of war because it’s not in the proper context of war. Although the word is exciting and sticks out, it does not mean the same. Using war words to dress up otherwise normal events is fine. (“Oh, the teacher just killed me with that essay!”) That is not only harmless but it’s part of the natural cycle of words. Words will be used, overused, set aside for awhile, and, as they become fresh, they are used again. This has been going on for centuries. The danger is with overusing the words in their proper context.
In George Orwell’s work, 1984, the country Oceania was always fighting another country. It didn’t matter who they were fighting – that was irrelevant – but they fought anyway since it distracted the civilians from their personal lives and gave an artificial sense of unity to everyone. Nobody in Oceania thought this was strange; the word “war” had been so overused it became pointless and it didn’t mean anything to the people who lived there. Besides, war never affected them directly. It had gone on for as long as they could remember and they no longer cared. The word “war” had lost any meaning to them and, because war was meaningless to them, war continued on indefinitely.
Though 1984 is a fictional novel, a similar situation is going on in the Middle East. In recent history, many Arab nations war against Israel. The Arab community for the most part doesn’t protest against this – they have never known a time where they were not at war and see no reason why this war should end, so they allow it to continue.
Strangely enough, many people do not consider this war between these nations an actual war; they consider it a “conflict.” In fact, many news reporters today report the war between the Israelis and Arabs as a “conflict that has escalated to a major scale” and avoid the word “war” altogether. But isn’t this just another euphemism for war? War destroys, war tears apart civilizations, war kills. Isn’t this what is going on in this “conflict?” War sounds harsh and is considered unacceptable by many societies, but a conflict? A conflict is acceptable even though, in this case, the conflict is essentially a war. This is how many countries go into war without actually saying the actual word “war.”
For the United States, the event of war came about a little differently. Since Americans had forgotten the meaning of war, they didn’t mind using the actual word “war” as they went into the country Afghanistan and then into Iraq. Many people excitedly talked about the prospect of war in the proper context and were deceived about the literal meaning of war through glittering generalities given to them by the media, politicians, and others in power. Instead of realizing what destruction war can bring, they only focused on the good aspects of war, such as unity, heroism, and (eventually) peace. Because of this, the United States was led easily into war by politicians.
The definition of “war” changes according to the society, but what war is remains intact. If language alone held up the meaning of war, then many cultures whose languages do not have a clear definition of war (including the English language) would not have wars. Rather, war is something that goes beyond and has preceded language; indeed, language was built around the existence of war. This is why war is hard to define; the English language does not adequately describe every emotion tied into the meaning of the word “war.” David Brudnoy, the columnist who wrote “A Lot to Learn” puts it best. As he was trying to figure out the correct words for September 11, he wrote, “We learned that we didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about what had happened. Our words were either too anemic or too overblown… In truth, we had no words at all.” Though he writes this for the events of September 11, his words apply perfectly to war.
As the United States prepared to go into war with Afghanistan, President Bush tried to convey what war would be like to the American people in his “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” He said, “This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.” He was right. It was not just a slight skirmish as many expected but a full-fledged war. There has been death, there has been destruction, and, for better or worse, it has altered people’s lives dramatically.
Now, not only do Americans know what war is like and how it affects the world, but they also know what the literal meaning of “war” is. With this knowledge, they can choose whether to fight or not and, with their decision, the English language will change accordingly and a new definition of “war” will emerge – until the next war comes around and changes all.
Ah, don't you love formal essays? This was the first English paper I ever wrote for a class. *gulp*
