We're in the grip of a faulty metaphor
By ANTHONY B. ROBINSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Friday, February 14, 2003
seattlepi.nwsource.com
I have a friend, also a preacher, who is fond of saying, "There's nothing worse than a metaphor that has done its work!" We preachers, wordsmiths, are constantly employing metaphors. As the world and our nation tremble on the edge of war, I fear we are in the grip of a faulty metaphor. Very soon after 9/11, the metaphor that was invoked to explain our situation and to map the future was "war." The president declared "War on terrorism," and announced to the nations of the world, "You are either for us or you are against us."
As metaphor, war is a heady and dangerous elixir. It simplifies a complex world, dividing it into two clear sides, declaring one side good and the other evil. Just now we are vexed because historic and recent allies, namely Germany, France and Russia, are refusing to behave as the war metaphor insists they ought; that is, either for us or against us.
Moreover, war promises release and relief from the routines of ordinary life. The often-invisible heroism of daily work decently done, of faithfulness in responsibility and relationship and slogging through the slow work of building most anything, is replaced by fiery martyrdom, aerial fireworks and Hollywood-style shootouts. Whether any of that describes the actuality of war is another matter. The point is that war eclipses all complexity, mobilizes nations and allows wholesale deployment of massive resources.
The metaphor has, it seems, done its work. On Monday the Christian Science Monitor, whether by design or not, revealed how much the citizens of North Korea and the United States now, ironically, have in common. Both live on the edge. In North Korea, the citizens of Pyongyang are under a "Siege Mentality," with "Fear of Attack Building." Meanwhile, across the world and on the other side of the front page, it was "Heightened Alert" in Buffalo, N.Y., where U.S. border guards carrying machine guns were responding to the latest terrorist alert.
But what if we've got the wrong metaphor? What if we got off on the wrong rhetorical foot after 9/11? What if we have framed the situation erroneously from the beginning and are racing downhill propelled by the weight of a way of thinking that, rather than helping, is doing a great deal to magnify our problems and distort our perceptions?
Is there another metaphor, another way to frame the world after 9/11? Instead of war, might we speak of crime and criminal activity? Instead of military action, might we think of policing and judicial process? With such a shift the temperature goes down almost immediately, a disappointment to some, but precisely the point. "So can we stop talking so much about 'war,' " asks Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, "and reconcile ourselves to the fact that the punishment of terrorist crime, and the gradual reduction of its threat cannot be translated into the satisfying language of decisive and dramatic conquest?"
To speak of war on terrorism assumes a unified and identifiable enemy who has declared war. Such a perception ups the ante tremendously and, ironically, gives the terrorist exactly what he wants, the dignity of war. To view terrorism as crime, rather than war, seems much closer to the reality of what has been experienced. There is no single, unified enemy. (Note the administration's steady yet unconvincing efforts to tie Iraq to al-Qaida.) Moreover, to describe terrorists as criminals not only has a de-escalating effect, it robs terrorists of the dignifying rhetoric or war, classifying them as merely criminals.
Does this shift of metaphor and perception also have bearing on the situation in Iraq? If we're engaged in war, the task must be to defeat the enemy. If, however, we face a breach of international law and of nuclear non-proliferation treaties, then the task is for the community of nations to strengthen and support the rule of law. This would be expressed in a more deliberate and multi-lateral approach on Iraq. That is a slower, less intoxicating labor, but it is a framing of the issues that better fits reality.
As Christopher Jones, an international security scholar at the University of Washington's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, recently pointed out, "The Bush administration has in effect accepted the rules of engagement set by ludicrously weaker opponents, Iraq with its $29 billion GDP and North Korea with is $16 billion GDP (by comparison, the state of Washington has a $200 billion economy)." The war metaphor has, ironically, seduced us into giving such nations far more power than they have or deserve.
It would have been understandable if in the wake of 9/11 the American people had reacted with bellicose rhetoric. By and large, that did not happen. The American people showed considerable restraint. Those who have overreacted and have taken us to the brink have, alas, been our leaders. In many ways, this seems a spectacular failure of leadership for it has distorted reality by interpreting it through the wrong metaphorical lens.
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Anthony B. Robinson is senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church: United Church of Christ in Seattle. E-mail: trobinson@plymouthchurchseattle.org |
