The war of the words
One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else.
In the second world war we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like. However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable. The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else...

Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.
Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.

It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets? I hope you're beginning to see the problem.
The key thing, I suppose, is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".
Describing the recent attack on Najaf, the New York Times happily hit upon the word "militiamen". This has the advantage of being a bit vague (nobody really knows what a "militiaman" looks like or does), while at the same time sounding like the sort of foreigners any responsible government ought to kill on sight.

However, the semantic problems in Iraq run even deeper than that.

For example, there's the "handover of power" that's due to take place on June 30. Since no actual "power" is going to be handed over, the coalition chaps have had to find a less conclusive phrase. They now talk about the handover of "sovereignty", which is a suitably elastic notion. And besides, handing over a "notion" is a damn sight easier than handing over anything concrete.
Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.
As for the word "ceasefire", it's difficult to know what this signifies anymore. According to reliable witness reports from Falluja, the new American usage makes generous allowance for dropping cluster bombs and flares, and deploying artillery and snipers.

But perhaps the most exciting linguistic development is to be found away from the areas of conflict - in the calm of the Oval Office, where very few people get killed for looking out of their windows. Here words such as "strategy" and "policy" are daily applied to the kneejerk reactions of politicians and military commanders who think that brute force is the only way to resolve difficult problems in a delicate situation. As Major Kevin Collins, one of the officers in charge of the marines in Falluja, put it: "If you choose to pick a fight, we'll finish it."

In the past, one might have used a phrase such as "numbskull stupidity" rather than "strategy". But then, language has a life of its own ... which is more than one can say for a lot of nnocent Iraqis. "
Terry Jones
Friday April 30, 2004
The Guardian
Full article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1206691,00.html

We can play a game with this
US FORCES IRAQI PEOPLE Invaders Invaded Scum Civilians Killers Killed Shouldn't be there Should be there Got rid of Saddam Don't notice any difference Should all die Should all be left alone
and so on.

Classic example is anarchy - taken by early anarchists to describe a state without government, redefined by their critics to mean violence and chaos.

D.

NLP is about prioritizing values and recovering deletions. For many reasons this thread is valid.
How is it possible for President Bush to hold the ten commandments in one hand, and a rifle in the other? Perhaps he believes God visited him one night in the oval office and named him the world's new Moses? Since when has the commandment "Thou shall not kill!" become less important than seeking revenge?
What do you suppose Bush is going to say when he's standing in final judgement and our Lord standing at the right hand of the Father says, " Do you not know the story of Moses on Mt Arafat when My Father gave the laws to all people? And did you not heed the personal warning meant specifically for you?"
George Bush quivering and shaking, might be able to squeak out a humble "yes", then confusedly, he whispered "what me? personal meessage to me"?.
And shaking His head sorrowfully, Our Lord continued, "You could've cured cancer with the amount of money spent on waging your war. Instead you lined the pockets of your supporters in the defense industry and your reelection campaign funding prospered."
And God the Father in His swift judgement decreed, "Burn Bush!!" and so it was, forever and ever.