GEORGE O. VS. GEORGE W.?:

Regime Change? (Joshua Micah Marshall, September 21st, 2002, Talking Points)

Among the more bizarre and troubling aspects of the 'regime change' debate is ... well, the phrase 'regime change.'

According to various neo-conservatives and Iraq-hawks, George Orwell is a dedicated Iraq-hawk and thoroughgoing supporter of regime change. This may well be the case. I'm never able to predict such things. But I would have imagined that were Orwell alive today the phrase 'regime change' itself would be one he would quickly set upon with a knife and a fork. [...]

Like many phrases Orwell had at, 'regime change' is one that comes with the evasion and concealment prepackaged within it. We all know more or less what the phrase means: the violent otherthrow of one government and its replacement with another, chosen by the power which overthrew the first one, or, in other words, by us. So why not say so? Using an abstract and antiseptic phrase like 'regime change' for a process which is neither abstract or antiseptic is corrupting. [...]

I don't pretend that the short-hand of 'regime change' is the end of the world in itself. But it is the exposed tip of an extremely dishonest public debate--one in which assertions which are widely understood to be false are stated and not corrected, in which important distinctions are clouded with obscuring phrases, and in which discussion of the long-term consequences of specific actions are trumped by slogans. And that's a very big deal.

Mr. Marshall seems here to have forgotten that language must also facilitate communication. Surely he's not proposing that every time one of us gets to the point where we are saying that we want Saddam gone that rather than using a reasonably direct shorthand like "regime change" we say instead that we support "the violent otherthrow of one government and its replacement with another, chosen by the power which overthrew the first one, or, in other words, by us"? Or maybe we could shorten this to its acronym: tvoogairwacbtpwotfooiowbu? Neither precisely trips off the tongue does it?
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 25, 2002 10:31 AM