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April 07, 2004

More Newspeak

William Safire is supposedly an expert on language.

So his use of newspeak in referring to the Sadr fighters as terrorists can only be seen as deliberate propaganda:

A minority of terrorists led by the firebrand Moktada al-Sadr, under Iran's influence, are challenging the quietist Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

By any reasonable definition, Sadr's forces are classic geurillas-- even the quoted phrase highlights them as part of a civil rebellion against rival groups.

Like all newspeak, this deceptive "terrorist" language just means more self-delusion by warhawks that there is no broad-based resistance to the US Occupation. Whether you want the troops out or a democratic Iraq, the Bush administration dismissal of the threat has been deadly.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has arrogantly declared that the US could go it alone in Iraq with relatively limited troops to police a large country. With broad resentment of the US, we've been unable to build a real Iraqi force to police the country, meaning that rebellion and resistance has to be put down by US troops directly.

So our soldiers die.

Either the US needs to turn administration of the country to a broad-based UN-led military administration-- with large levels of troops from multiple countries -- or Iraq looks to sink into a quagmire where any hope for democracy will fail and all that will emerge is many, many dead Iraqi and American bodies.

Posted by Nathan at April 7, 2004 07:45 AM

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