What’s the Word: It’s hard to put war into words
As most of you know by now, this column is called “What’s the Word.” And as most of you are aware by now, the word today is “war.”
It’s on all our minds as we watch it unfold in real time on our television screens. In fact, it’s almost inescapable. Every branch of the media is inundating us with the images.
Images of the war itself, images of those who have lost their lives, images of the pitiable and confused Iraqi soldiers who are surrendering to our forces and images of how the conflict is affecting us here at home.
These images of war, sorrow, protest and outrage festoon the front pages of our newspapers, the covers of our magazines and dominate our broadcast media.
These images imprint themselves indelibly into our mind’s eye, almost defying us to find the words to describe them and the effect they have on us.
And while the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” still holds true, it’s also true that no one presents these images accompanied by silence. No one presents them on a blank page.
We still depend on words to express, or attempt to express, our reaction to these disturbing visual representations of human conflict, to make sense of them, to make sense of the political issues that provoked us to initiate the destruction of life and property we call war.
So maybe we should take a look at the real meanings of some of the words we are tossing around as we watch this conflict unfold.
First among those is the word “war” itself.
The American Heritage dictionary defines war as:
“A state or period of armed conflict between nations, states, or parties.”
Accurate no doubt, and descriptive in its own way, but it’s odd the definition of war says nothing about the causes of war. Nothing about the lives and possessions destroyed by war. Nothing about the devastated cities and towns. Nothing about the destruction. Nothing about injured and maimed soldiers. Nothing about death.
But the images show us all of that, in vivid, luridly colorful, and almost balletic representations of the realities of war.
In the face of that, the word fails us. War is so much more than just “armed conflict.” War is the result of conflict, conflicting ideals, conflicting political ideologies, conflicting moral tenets, conflicts over national borders, and the age old bugaboo, conflicts over economic concerns.
Oh yes, many wars are predominantly about money once one gets to the bottom of things.
But according to our leaders, this war is about one thing only, and that is the concept of threat. We are being told the reason we are attacking Iraq and Saddam Hussein is that he, and by association, his country, present a clear and present danger to our welfare.
Threat: “An expression of an intention to inflict pain, injury, or evil. One regarded as a possible danger.”
If we go by that definition, then Hussein is most certainly the personification of that concept. He has time and again expressed his hatred of our society and his intention to wipe us off the face of the earth.
And in the face of that, what are we to do? If we are to survive, no matter how much we hate the reality of war, we are compelled to remove that threat.
We are compelled to inflict what we so descriptively call “shock and awe.”
Shock: to strike with sudden forceful impact.
Awe: respect tinged with fear.
Our leaders obviously know their words, but are the actions they represent the right ones for global good?
Only time will tell.