My Ease with War

My girlfriend and I were sitting around like one of those old French bohemian couples; she read one of my articles all the while I tried to procure another round of sex. By now, I already know that a personal article -- as opposed to a terrifying narrative involving the US government -- is the way to get her "mentally" stimulated. Sadly, she was reading one my terrifying US government narratives when, instead of chastising the criminals in Washington, she chastised me for my liberal use of the word "war."

"You Americans always use the word 'war,'  everything is a war. A war on drugs this, a war on waste that, a war on poverty this, a civil war soon," she mocked.

 

I grew a bit frustrated, but began to think about the importance we give to words. Words like rape, murder, and slaying illicit certain emotions, certain dark thoughts when we hear them. It is true that the government can casually declare that it is going to start a war on poverty, a war on hunger, a war on waste, a war on drugs, and we all see it as very good. When the government casually declares a war against some far off enemy, to us it just seems like another routine government initiative designed to take care of us.

 

It is very 1984, but there are entire Pentagon and government groups dedicated to naming certain operations and activities. What in WWI was clearly visualized in words as shell shock, has now become post-traumatic stress disorder; a hard to visualize and pinpoint set of words, further obscured when shortened to just PTSD. What in WWII was called water torture was reborn as waterboarding. Waterboarding itself is often just referred to as an enhanced interrogation technique, or an EIT. I've found myself reading declassified documents and wondering what EITs were, only to learn that in our glorious Newspeak, EITs are just a sanitized activity too complicated to fully detail to the public.

 

Every cruel act is reduced to a mere technical term or abbreviation. Life was cruel during our grandparents' generation; people had to deal with aerial bombardments, extrajudicial assassinations, kidnapping, civilian casualties, and water torture. Fortunately, now we only have to deal with surgical strikes, targeted killings, extraordinary rendition, collateral damage, and EITs. Times have greatly improved since the fall of Hirohito; we don't even need a Ministry of War anymore, just a Ministry of Defense.