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CounterPunch
February
24, 2003
Colin Powell's Forked Tongue
First Bomb the
Language, Then the Iraqis
by TERRY JONES
It was interesting to hear Colin Powell accuse
France and Germany of cowardice in not wanting to go to war.
Or, as he put more succinctly, France and Germany 'are afraid
of upholding their responsibility to impose the will of the international
community'. Powell's speech brings up one of the most outrageous
but least examined aspects of this whole war on Iraq business.
I am speaking about the appalling collateral damage already being
inflicted on the English language.
Perhaps the worst impact is on our vocabulary.
'Cowardice', according to Colin Powell, is the refusal to injure
thousands of innocent civilians living in Baghdad in order to
promote US oil interests in the Middle East. The corollary is
that 'bravery' must be the ability to order the deaths of 100,000
Iraqis without wincing or bringing up your Caesar salad.
I suppose Tony Blair is 'brave' because
he is willing to expose the people who voted for him to the threat
of terrorist reprisals in return for getting a red carpet whenever
he visits the White House, while Chirac is a 'coward' for standing
up to the bigoted bullying of the extremist right-wing Republican
warmongers who currently run the United States.
In the same vein, well-fed young men
sitting in millions of dollars' worth of military hardware and
dropping bombs from 30,000ft on impoverished people who have
already had all their arms taken away are exemplars of 'bravery'.
'Cowardliness', according to George W. Bush, is hijacking an
aircraft and deliberately piloting it into a large building.
There are plenty of things you could call that, but not 'cowardly'.
Yet when Bill Maher pointed this out on his TV show, Politically
Incorrect, he was anathematised and the sponsors threatened to
withdraw funding from the show.
Something weird is going on when not
only do the politicians deliberately change the meanings of words,
but also society is outraged when someone points out the correct
usage.
Then there's 'the international community'.
Clearly, Colin Powell cannot be talking of the millions who took
to the streets last Saturday. The 'international community' he's
talking about must be those politicians who get together behind
closed doors to decide how best to stay in power and enrich their
supporters by maiming, mutilating and killing a lot of foreigners
in funny clothes whom they'll never see. And while we're at it,
what about that word 'war'. My dictionary defines a 'war' as
'open, armed conflict between two parties, nations or states'.
Dropping bombs from a safe height on an already hard-pressed
people, whose infrastructure is in chaos from years of sanctions
and who live under an oppressive regime, isn't a 'war'. It's
a turkey shoot.
But then the violence being done to the
English language is probably the price we have to pay for cheap
petrol.
Language is supposed to make ideas clearer
so that we can understand them. But when politicians such as
Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair get hold of language,
their aim is usually the opposite. That's how they persuade us
to take ludicrous concepts seriously. Like the whole idea of
a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country,
or on a national group within your own country, but you can't
wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won?
When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?
When men in power propose doing something
that is shameful, wrong and destructive, the first casualty is
the English language. It would matter less if it were the only
casualty. But if they carry on perverting our vocabulary and
twisting our grammar, the result will spell death for many who
are now alive.
Terry Jones
is a founder member of Monty Python.
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