Let me appropriate a sentiment from Wordsworth to set the
stage for this post.
From God, who is our home
Words are never deployed in utter nakedness; they come
always trailing clouds of meaning and consequence. The use of “war” to describe the U.S response to the attacks
of September 11 has consequences.
I don’t necessarily agree with Sontag that the language was
intentionally chosen in a cynical attempt to consolidate power. Nevertheless, it makes a great deal of
difference whether we describe our actions as fighting a war or bringing
criminals to justice. In fairness
to Sontag, there is considerable evidence that the Bush administration pressed
for extraordinary presidential powers under the president’s war-making
authority granted by the constitution.
See the link below for part of this evidence.
Like Sontag, I find the use of the word “war” to describe the United States’ actions after the war interesting, and something worth discussing. I tend to agree with Sontag that the use of the word “war” is unconventional at best, but for me her assertion may raise more questions than it answers. I understand Sontag’s position that the War on Terror is not a fight that the U.S. undertook to stop the threat of one particular nation. However, I don’t think that it’s necessarily in the same vein as a war on drugs or a war on poverty. The War on Terror is a multinational war, with troops being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to drone strikes that have been ordered on the soil of other countries, like Yemen. This sets the War on Terror apart from a war on poverty like that which has taken place in the U.S., simply because poverty is something that can only be controlled within a single nation’s borders. While the U.S. could try to take on poverty in other places, it’s highly unlikely that the federal government would want to devote resources to something like that. The war on drugs is a different story, if only because it has such a large impact on countries such as Mexico. However, the U.S. could not unilaterally invade Mexico to combat the drug cartels. If it did, that would be a war against Mexico over drugs, not a war on drugs. Yet the War on Terror is not completely similar to wars like the Revolutionary War or the Vietnam War either. There are no formal armies being raised by governments to fight the U.S. forces. The U.S. has raised forces and is devoting funds to fight a non-governmental agency, both by occupying the nations that harbor the international criminals and by more informal fighting elsewhere. The War on Terror is a war between the U.S. government (and its troops) and a group without an official nation. It would seem that the two definitions of war that Sontag used to try to place the War on Terror into a category are not fitting for the current war(s). This is why there are questions still to answer is the War on Terror a combination of the definitions of war? Is the title “War on Terror simply misleading? Does the title really refer to two wars (the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan)? Or does the War on Terror set a new definition for war, in which the increasingly global world causes like-minded people across the globe to join forces and create their own “army”? I’d love to hear what everyone thinks.
ReplyDelete-Mike Paskert