Hermeneutic Heretic

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Is the War on Terror Over?
Do we still need to fight a war on terror?

The answer seems to be no for an increasing number in the West who are weary over Afghanistan and Iraq or complacent from the absence of a major attack on the scale of 9/11.

The British Foreign Office has scrapped the phrase “war on terror” as inexact, inflammatory and counterproductive. U.S. Central Command has just dropped the term “long war” to describe the fight against radical Islam.

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This thinking may seem understandable given the ineffectiveness of al-Qaida to kill many Americans after 9/11. Or it may also reflect hopes that if we only leave Iraq, radical Islam will wither away. But it is dead wrong for a number of reasons.

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Third, in some ways stateless terrorists can be more dangerous than past conventional threats. Autocrats in some Middle East countries allow indirect financial and psychological support for al-Qaida terrorists without leaving footprints of their intent. They must assume that a single terrorist strike could kill thousands of Americans without our ability to strike back at their capitals. This inability to tie a state to its support for terrorism is our greatest obstacle in this war - and our enemies’ greatest advantage.

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This is a strange war. Our successes in avoiding attack convince some that the real danger has passed. And when we kill jihadists abroad, we are told it is peripheral to the war or only incites more terrorism.

But despite the current efforts at denial, the war against Islamic terrorism remains real and deadly. We can’t wish it away until Middle Eastern dictatorships reform - or we end their oil stranglehold over the world economy.

This example of analyzing the limits of a metaphor is not particularly exceptional in any way. What is interesting about it is the way the argument is spread across the text. Each sentence of the text makes sense within the context of the metaphor but the metaphor itself if explicitly called out at the start and at the end. The middle of the text is simply descriptive but descriptive in such a way that the images all feed into the imagery triggered by the metaphor. This is not particularly surprising but it is rather illustrative of the role of conceptual patterns in the construction of the texture (cohesive harmony) of a text.

The following segment from the Wikipedia entry on suicide attack is a good example of how the restrictions on mapping in conceptual integration can be negotiated even “against the grain” of the “logic” of some of the basic propositional structures behind the conceptual frame. So, the argument against ‘homicide bombing’ correctly points out that the reason ’suicide’ is used as the attribute because it distinguishes it from the purely homicidal nature of a regular bombing. However, the reason (implicit) why the aptness of the the ’suicide bombing’ label has been disputed because of the additional elements in the frame. For instance, the frame of suicide carries with it more than just the propositional meaning of ‘killing oneself’ but also possible affective elements such as pity, need to understand the reason for the action, reluctance to condemn the action, certain amount of courage needed for the action. In this case, ‘homicide attacks’ is a more appropriate term. Of course, in this case, the proponents of replacing ’suicide’ with ‘homicide’ have lost but in theory there is no reason why ‘homicide attack’ could not be an adequate term if the language community agreed to use it. For instance, the American ‘I could care less’ that replaced ‘I couldn’t care less’ is a perfectly serviceable phrase despite its actual meaning being the opposite of its ‘literal’ or ‘logical’ meaning. (See here and here for more.)

Suicide attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Usage of “Suicide Bombing” and related terms

The usage of the term “suicide bombing” dates back to at least 1940. An August 10, 1940 New York Times article mentions the term in relation to German tactics. A March 4, 1942 article refers to a Japanese attempt at a “suicide bombing” on an American carrier. The Times (London) of April 15, 1947, page 2, refers to a new pilotless, radio-controlled rocket missile thus: “Designed originally as a counter-measure to the Japanese ’suicide-bomber,’ it is now a potent weapon for defence or offence.” The quotes are in the original and suggest that the phrase was an existing one. An earlier article (Aug 21, 1945, page 6) refers to a kamikaze plane as a “suicide-bomb.”

The term with the meaning “an attacker blowing up himself or a vehicle to kill others” appeared in 1981 when it was used in an Associated Press article to describe the bombing of the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut.

In order to assign either a more positive or negative connotation to the act, suicide bombing is sometimes referred to by different terms. Islamists often call the act a isshtahad (meaning martyrdom operation), and the suicide bomber a shahid (pl. shuhada, literally ‘witness’ and usually translated as ‘martyr’). The term denotes one who died in order to testify his faith in God (Allah), for example those who die while waging jihad bis saif; it is applied to suicide bombers, by the Palestinian Authority among others, in part to overcome Islamic strictures against suicide. This term has been embraced by Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah and other Palestinian factions engaging in suicide bombings. (The title is by no means restricted to suicide bombers and can be used for a wide range of people, including innocent victims; Muhammad al-Durra, for example, is among the most famous shuhada of the Intifada, and even a few non-Palestinians such as Tom Hurndall and Rachel Corrie have been called shahid.)

[edit] “Homicide bombing”

Some effort has been made to replace the term suicide bombing with the term homicide bombing. The first such use was by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in April 2002.[41] The Fox News Channel and the New York Post, both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, are two media organizations that have adopted the term. Fox News began using the term after it was suggested by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an interview.

Supporters of the term homicide bombing argue that since the primary purpose of such a bombing is to kill other people rather than merely to end one’s own life, the term homicide is a more accurate description than suicide. Others argue that homicide bombing is a less useful term, since it fails to capture the distinctive feature of suicide bombings, namely the bombers’ use of means which they are aware will inevitably bring about their own deaths. For instance, Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski could both ostensibly be called “homicide bombers,” but neither could be called a “suicide bomber.” To this extent it has also been argued that most bombings are “homicide bombings”, as loss of life is their inherent aim.

[edit] “Genocide bombing”

Another attempted replacement is genocide bombing. The term was coined in 2002 by Canadian member of parliament Irwin Cotler, in an effort to replace the term homicide bomber as a substitute for “suicide bomber.”[42] The intention was to focus attention on the alleged intention of genocide by militant Palestinians in their calls to “Wipe Israel off the map.”[43]

[edit] “Islamikaze”

In 1997, Professor Raphael Israeli coined the term Islamikaze as a proposed description for Islamic suicide bombers.[44] According to Professor Israeli, he made up the word “Islamikaze” in an effort to signify that the primary goal of “suicide bombers” is not suicide but the infliction of damage to the enemy.[45]

The term has not entered into widespread usage.[46] Primarily, it continues to be used in Professor Israeli’s own publications and in works discussing Professor Israeli’s publications. For example, the most prominent usage of the term is probably Professor Israeli’s 2003 book.[47] However Stephen Blackwell has criticized Israeli’s coinage as a “flippant phrase” that “demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of Islamic culture”,[48] and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn has discussed whether Israeli’s concept of “Islamikazes” as motivated by military rather than suicidal goals may be helpful in profiling possible suicide bombers.[49]

On The Media: Transcript of “Me is for Media” (April 20, 2007)
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I don’t want to diminish the horrific experience that those people went through, but it did seem at times as if they were reading lines from a script, almost as if they’d been through all this before.

THOMAS de ZENGOTITA: Right.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And we have a couple of examples of that.

FEMALE STUDENT: This is something that no one will ever get over. I mean, the people who died, yes, they’re, they’ve finished their pain, but the pain for everybody else will go on forever.

MALE STUDENT: It’s just insane. That’s just, that’s such a big number. Like we were already saying this is just like a college Columbine. This is, it’s just really sad.

THOMAS de ZENGOTITA: Yeah, those two particular individuals, there’s no question in my mind, just listening to their voices, that they understand they’re in a drama, as well as something real. It’s a fusion of reality and representation. I call it the “story event.” The story shapes the event. The event shapes the story. It unfolds in real time, just the way the kids who were trapped in their various classes were reporting on their cell phones simultaneously as the events unfolded, and hearing themselves on their own laptops reporting through MSNBC on themselves.

As usual, On The Media asks the really interesting questions of the right people. The idea of perceiving event through other events - a sort of negotiated grieving - is very consistent with the concept of conceptual integration. However, I think it is probably mistaken to locate it purely in the media age.

THOMAS de ZENGOTITA: I think Kennedy’s assassination was the first story event. I think that was the first time in history where, you know, millions and millions of people who weren’t anywhere near some traumatic event of this kind - like say Pearl Harbor for comparison – you know, began to tell stories as if this had happened to them.

I suspect that a more detailed analysis of past “pre-media” events would reveal a similarly scripted involvement although the scripts would look rather different. This is probably a result of a universal (if culturally heavily parametrized) human drive to view everything as something else. Most rituals could probably be redescribed in those terms. Of course, the real question is what role this kind of analogical (metaphoric) thinking plays in different contexts. For example, in the modern world, ritualizing the inner experience of event viewers seems to be different from rituals in less mediated societies where most of the ritualized experienced deals with the experience of the group. For instance, grieving rituals (with exaggerated expressions of sadness, professional mourners for hire, extravagant burials, etc.) are often aimed at public display with the purpose of integrating a death into the processes of the group, whereas the ritualized displays of private grief played out in TV shows (ritual plays) are aimed at showing individuals how to integrate the death of someone into their private inner processes, mostly away from the group. The analogical principles, however, remain the same. (It should also be said that by its very nature, every ritual has a public component, so it is possible that upon closer inspection even this private inner mourning is really a matter of public concern.)

Imus’s last outrage? - The Boston Globe
Imus apologized for his latest remark and was suspended for two weeks. But this time, his job could be on the line, said John DePetro, a radio talk show host who was fired by WRKO after calling gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross a “fat lesbian.”

“As much as mine was mean-spirited, it was factually accurate,” said DePetro, who now works at WPRO in Providence. The problem with the Imus comment, he said, is “there’s no way to defend it. These girls are not whores. They are not prostitutes.”

This is an illuminating reflection on the folk theory of figurative meaning. No matter what trope a reference is, it is more powerful if a simple lexical reference (with a truth value) can be established. Of course, Imus’s comment never implied that the basketball players were prostitutes. He was referencing the term “ho” as used in contemporary popular culture rather than as its source meaning of ‘whore’. It wasn’t even “mean-spirited” - in the most basic sense. The problem in terms of racial discrimination was the unthinking use of a term like this by a public figure (this was well-discussed on one of the more recent editions of News and Notes Roundtable.

Nancy Pelosi, Respectfully Maintaining Her Own Image - washingtonpost.com
There are few images more discomforting than public figures thrust into foreign cultures and required to wear the host’s traditional attire. Almost without exception the visitors tend to look smaller and more vulnerable. They evoke the uneasiness of children who have been dressed by a parent, teacher, minister or other authority figure. Wearing something unfamiliar or inappropriate in a public forum has a way of deflating even the most pompous figures. Their body language communicates their uneasiness. Our eyes register the sight as jarring.

Two prominent features of framing intersect in this segment (and the whole article). One is a valuable description of the process of conceptual integration of frames - where individual elements of conceptual frames need to blend into one image (completion). The other is evidence of frames themselves. Phrases like “uneasiness of children who have been dressed by a parent” provide an excellent evidence of a culturally prominent scenario (referring to comedy routines, films, and other discussions).

And then there is the third aspect. Negotiation. The author is not simply writing a piece, they are helping us establish (entrench) certain frames and establish boundaries for their blending.

Think Progress » Gingrich: When I Said ‘Language Of Living In The Ghetto,’ I Meant Hebrew (Or Maybe Yiddish)
Newt Gingrich said this past weekend that the U.S. should abolish bilingual education so that people aren’t speaking “the language of living in a ghetto.�

But last night on Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich claimed his statement “did not refer to Spanish.� Gingrich insisted, “What I meant is very clear[],� but then wouldn’t say which language he was referring to.

Gingrich said, “Now, I’ll let you pick — frankly, ghetto, historically had referred as a Jewish reference originally. I did not mention Hispanics, and I certainly do not want anybody who speaks Spanish to think I’m in any way less than respectful of Spanish or any other language spoken by people who come to the United States.�

Gingrich made his comments in the context of bilingual education. Overwhelmingly, that means English/Spanish education. Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Hispanic Education Coalition, understood what Gingrich meant: “The tone of his comments was very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto.�

There is now doubt what Gingrich was referring to when he spoke of the language of the ghetto. However, what was he doing when he tried to insist that he didn’t mean Spanish? The word “ghetto” was immediately understood to be used in a physical rather than a metaphorical sense. But rather than acknowledging this and offering an alternative interpretation, Gingrich chose to prevaricate in a way that must be obvious to anyone. After all, his point is a very accurate description of the respectable common-sense folk theory of bilingual education as something doing harm to children’s learning and prospects (which also happens to be dead wrong). If Hispanic children, the theory says, don’t use every opportunity to speak the “majority” language, English, they will end up being ghetoized, that is condemned to a life not conforming to the middle-class image of normalcy.

And Gingrich makes that clear (in a sentiment that is probably genuine, if misguided):

We should not have a program which traps people into not being able to speak English by failing to teach them the language that is the prominent language of prosperity, the dominant language of government, the dominant language of politics.

Of course, he loses any credibility with this:

And I’ve talked to experts who believe that an intensive program, young people could learn to be relatively fluent in four to six months, and older people could learn in a year.

Which about as credible as saying, I’ve spoken to experts who assure me that the Earth is in fact flat.

Peter Zamora is also being slightly disingenuous because ghetoization can  happen even to people who don’t live in a physical ghetto. Of course, given that his interlocutor is Gingrich, jumping to conclusions of hatefulness is probably a safe discursive bet. Also, we might want to investigate what motivated Gingrich to take up the issue in the first place, which is most likely a xenophobic instinct - fear of people playing a role in your community who speak a language you don’t understand.