Monday, September 26, 2005
Political Tautology
Today Private Lynndie England stood at attention, no trace of emotion even flickering through her eyes as the jury pronounced her guilty of indecent acts, prisoner abuse and conspiracy. Though the story of England’s conviction is still fresh, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has long since gone stale. Her conviction has been long in coming and all but inevitable. Nevertheless, it does call to memory the underlying absurdities and atrocities of the wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq and on Terror.
I cringe every time an overenthusiastic journalist stretches to draw parallels between our government and the thought police. I wince when pundits and politicians invoke Hitler and the Nazis to vilify an opponent merely by juxtaposition. Still there is one facet of this administration’s policy that tugs at my conscience, begging me to pay credence to otherwise seeming dangerously hyperbolic claims: Bush’s tautology of politics. Bush has managed, as in Orwell’s 1984, to wield language and a political weapon.
In dubbing terrorists as enemy combatants Bush frees himself and his administration of the pesky humanitarian concerns of the Geneva accords. The Geneva accords apply to Prisoners of War (POW). This administration asserts that since terrorism has no national allegiance, they cannot be POWs and rather are ‘enemy combatants.’ Still, this seems to be splitting hairs. Worse, however, is the fact that Bush insists on this distinction while simultaneously firmly refusing to give even the most basic definition of the term ‘enemy combatants.” Never mind that this is a direct and incredibly hypocritical affront to the very same treaty intended to protect those international human rights the terrorists are so eager to ravage. All Bush has done is relabel a group of people and suddenly he no longer feels bound by any international agreements, humanitarian ideals, or morality of any kind.
With no definition of any kind to provide for accountability, anyone could be an enemy combatant. The government could arrest you or me merely for thinking impure thoughts and hold us indefinitely without charging us with a crime. They wouldn’t even really need a reason at all since they feel no obligation to file charges. I just don’t understand how he can insist so emphatically that there is a distinction between POWs and ‘enemy combatants’ when he doesn’t even know what the latter term means. Moreover, I can’t even fathom how he can feel justified in throwing around this meaningless term and using it as justification for suspending habeus corpus and generally spurning the selfsame unalienable rights our founders fought so hard to save.
Bush understands the awesome power of words -- a frightening thought considering his tremulous relationship with his own vocabulary. My question though, is why are we, as Americans, accepting of the fact that Bush has no definition for this distinctive and important term? Why aren't we holding him accountable? I struggle to decide what concerns me more, that Bush is comfortable grounding what might be considered a war crime in nothing but a political tautology, or that no one, not the media nor the American public, ever mentions these political absurdities.
I cringe every time an overenthusiastic journalist stretches to draw parallels between our government and the thought police. I wince when pundits and politicians invoke Hitler and the Nazis to vilify an opponent merely by juxtaposition. Still there is one facet of this administration’s policy that tugs at my conscience, begging me to pay credence to otherwise seeming dangerously hyperbolic claims: Bush’s tautology of politics. Bush has managed, as in Orwell’s 1984, to wield language and a political weapon.
In dubbing terrorists as enemy combatants Bush frees himself and his administration of the pesky humanitarian concerns of the Geneva accords. The Geneva accords apply to Prisoners of War (POW). This administration asserts that since terrorism has no national allegiance, they cannot be POWs and rather are ‘enemy combatants.’ Still, this seems to be splitting hairs. Worse, however, is the fact that Bush insists on this distinction while simultaneously firmly refusing to give even the most basic definition of the term ‘enemy combatants.” Never mind that this is a direct and incredibly hypocritical affront to the very same treaty intended to protect those international human rights the terrorists are so eager to ravage. All Bush has done is relabel a group of people and suddenly he no longer feels bound by any international agreements, humanitarian ideals, or morality of any kind.
With no definition of any kind to provide for accountability, anyone could be an enemy combatant. The government could arrest you or me merely for thinking impure thoughts and hold us indefinitely without charging us with a crime. They wouldn’t even really need a reason at all since they feel no obligation to file charges. I just don’t understand how he can insist so emphatically that there is a distinction between POWs and ‘enemy combatants’ when he doesn’t even know what the latter term means. Moreover, I can’t even fathom how he can feel justified in throwing around this meaningless term and using it as justification for suspending habeus corpus and generally spurning the selfsame unalienable rights our founders fought so hard to save.
Bush understands the awesome power of words -- a frightening thought considering his tremulous relationship with his own vocabulary. My question though, is why are we, as Americans, accepting of the fact that Bush has no definition for this distinctive and important term? Why aren't we holding him accountable? I struggle to decide what concerns me more, that Bush is comfortable grounding what might be considered a war crime in nothing but a political tautology, or that no one, not the media nor the American public, ever mentions these political absurdities.
