Language and critical thinking

I’m bothered by the way that this administration’s language is picked up uncritically by the media. During the invasion of Iraq the administration frequently referred to Iraqi “death squads.” Although the term death squad generally refers to rogue military or paramilitary forces who kidnap and kill civilians in order to maintain fear and therefore control, they were actually talking about no more than ordinary units of Iraqi forces who were defending themselves from, or often trying desperately to surrender to, an invading force. And yet the TV and newspapers parroted the “death squad” terminology without question.

The latest assault on meaningful speech is the so called “surge” of 21,500 troops that President Bush plans to send to Iraq.

The definition of a surge is:

1. A sudden powerful or upward movement
2. A sudden large increase, typically a brief one that happens during an otherwise stable or quiescent period.

So a surge is something large: a sudden and dramatic increase well above normal levels. But there are already 132,000 troops in Iraq, so the increase is in the order of 16 percent, and the Secretary of State indicated today that not all of them might be sent over.

Is an increase of up to 16 percent — in stages — a “sudden large increase”? It seems to me to be neither large nor particularly sudden. The total numbers of troops would be around 153,500, and yet glancing back at the New York Times in November 2005 I see that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was announcing plans to cut back from 159,000 troops to about 137,000 or 138,000. We’ve already been to a higher troop level than this proposed “surge.” Oddly, it didn’t work back then, when the levels of insurgency were much lower.

Let’s question this language of a “surge.” And let’s not kid ourselves that it’s going to work.

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