Kosovo's war of words may do the
most damage
Europe Observed,
by Sheryle Bagwell
British author George Orwell warned the world more
than 50 years ago that war and totalitarianism were
separating words from their true meanings. If we were
ever in doubt, the language of the Kosovo conflict has
proved that Orwell's nightmare world of verbal trickery
and dehumanising euphemisms has become Europe's
reality.
Vietnam taught the military that the best way to maintain
domestic support for a war is to keep it as bloodless as
possible, which is, of course, impossible even in a
high-tech air campaign such as that over Kosovo. So the
language interpreting it must be sanitised instead.
Civilians killed or maimed thus become "collateral
damage". The bombs that were meant to hit military
installations but instead "accidently" strike a hospital or an
apartment block are explained away politely as having
been "seduced from their targets".
Meanwhile, the generals rule out a ground invasion, while
conceding that their troops may be called upon to fight in
a "non-permissive environment". The polite language is
even extended to the actions of NATO's enemy: the most
bloodless phrase to emerge from the entire Balkans
conflict must be "ethnic cleansing", two words so
overused that they are now completely devoid of
meaning.
The flipside of the sanitised euphemism is exaggerated
rhetoric. Rhetoric is the traditional tool of political leaders
during times of conflict. But during the Kosovo campaign
it has gone into over-drive. US President Clinton and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair liken Yugoslav leader
Slobodan Milosevic to Adolf Hitler and his "ethnic
cleansing" offensive against the Kosovar Albanians to that
of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.
Of course, the Serbs, too, are playing the same game.
Yugoslav state television has described NATO leaders
as "degenerate criminals" and CNN as "pigs". As British
playwright Harold Pinter and other members of the
international writers' group PEN wrote in a letter to The
Times recently, the difference is that Serbian statements
are dubbed propaganda in the West while the West's
overblown language is dismissed as mere "spin". "Both
terms are deplorable," they wrote. "If we cannot have
peace let us at least have the truth."
Truth? In war? (Sorry, NATO has not declared war
against the Serbs, it is conducting precision air strikes
against "legitimate, military targets" such as the bridge in
the Serbian town of Varvarin on Sunday which was
crowded with market day traffic and pedestrians. Eleven
people were killed.)
The biggest spin of all is that of NATO "unity" US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calls the alliance
"wedge-proof". Stay tuned for more statements of such
unity of purpose during this week's European Union
heads of government meeting in Cologne and the
upcoming G8 economic summit in the same city two
weeks later although Russia, a member of the G8 and a
Serb ally, will likely upset that apple cart.
The 19-member alliance is unified because its dominant
players, the US and Britain, tell us it is. While they say
this, Greece, a NATO member within shouting distance
of the conflict, has consistently called for an end to the air
strikes. Italy has also proposed a ceasefire, while the
Germans, who have been shoulder-to-shoulder with the
US and Britain on the need to keep up the military
pressure on Milosevic, have parted company with the
hawks who urge the deployment of ground troops.
Indeed, the spin two weeks ago from London was that
tough-talking British Prime Minister Tony Blair had been
urging a dovish Bill Clinton to give the ground troops
option a chance. This was followed by counter-spin from
Washington that Clinton had told Blair to stop his aides
spinning stories suggesting a rift between the pair. Are
there differences of opinion over ground troops? Who
knows?
"There is a bottle of champagne for the first person who
can supply me with a single direct quotation from Tony
Blair showing that our Prime Minister has been in any
sense lobbying for an invasion of Kosovo. Scour the
record," commented Daily Telegraph columnist Boris
Johnson, one of the war's chief cynics. He added: "We're
being spun, boys!"
Yet with the war now in its 10th week, the British media
seem happy to soak up any spin thrown their way, if it
gives them a new headline. The Sunday Telegraph ran an
"exclusive" this week which revealed that the British
Government, in a secret meeting with its European
counterparts, had pledged 50,000 troops to a
150,000-strong ground invasion for Kosovo. The story
was dismissed the next day.
Even when the NATO leaders are quoted directly, we
can't be sure of what they are saying. A big story last
week in Europe was a Germany-Italy meeting in southern
Italy, where the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
declared that the use of ground troops was "unthinkable".
The headlines dutifully declared that a new rift had now
opened up between Germany and Britain on the issue.
The problem was that Schroeder said nothing of the sort.
It emerged some days later that what he had actually said
in German was that "for Germany, sending in ground
troops was not being considered", something rather less
strident than "unthinkable". It turned out that the official
translator at the meeting had made an error, compounded
by news agencies which unknowingly flashed it around
the world.
Does anybody care any more? There have been so many
stories about ground invasions, so many references to
Milosevic's "evil war machine", that I suspect readers'
eyes now just glaze over in the West. We have started
turning off the television and its images of fleeing refugees.
The language of the Kosovo war the euphemisms, the lies
and the exaggerations no longer has an impact.
Perhaps. But George Orwell probably would disagree.
He believed such language made future wars more likely.
"War damages the fabric of civilisation not only by the
destruction it causes, nor even by the slaughter of human
beings but by stimulating hatred and dishonesty," he
wrote in 1944.
"By shooting at your enemy, you are not in the deepest
sense wronging him. But by hating him, by inventing lies
about him and bringing children up to believe them, by
clamoring for unjust peace terms which make further
wars inevitable, you are striking not at one perishable
generation but at humanity itself."
afr.com.au
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