We can label our attempts to stop politically motivated violence in a variety of ways. We could use the law enforcement metaphor or we could use the social epidemic metaphor. The Bush administration, however, has consciously chosen to invoke the metaphor of “war.” An article in the current edition of Scientific American Mind, “Talking about Terrorism,” [1] discusses the many negative entailments of the frame of “war.”
The war metaphor helps to define the American perception of the threat of terrorism. If terrorism is war, then the national security, indeed the existence, of each side is threatened. The conflict is zero-sum; the outcome will be victory for one side or the other. Being in a state of war also requires national unity, and dissent is easily interpreted as unpatriotic. The solution has to be military. Thus, the Department of Defense must play a lead role in shaping policy, and the president’s duties as commander in chief must take precedence over his other tasks. An expansion of executive power accompanies the war metaphor: measures that would not be acceptable in peacetime, such as restrictions on civil liberties and brutal interrogation practices, are now considered essential.
If this isn’t bad enough, framing counter-terrorism as “war” comes with many additional costs:
It threatens to corrupt society’s values, disrupt its orderly functioning and reshuffle its priorities. War calls for the disproportionate investment of a nation’s resources, with correspondingly less left for other concerns, including the economy, health care and education. “Collateral damage,” ethnic profiling, harsh interrogation tactics and unlimited internment of suspects may all be condoned in the name of security and excused by the uniqueness of circumstances the war concept implies. These costs are especially steep in a war that has no definite end.
Related posts at this site include:
The “war on terror” is a bad metaphor [2] and
Coordinated violence and the frame of “war” [3]
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