War_of_words

Feature Article October 17

Feature Article October 17, 2001

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Commentary - The war of wordsby David BrisonWar itself, and our response to it, has always been shaped by words words designed cleverly to make those that are fighting want to fight harder, and everyone on the sidelines more supportive of the war efforts.

This war on terrorism has some of its own language, but by and large leaders in the US are appealing to the old time-honoured sentiments patriotism, retaliation, fear, moral superiority, and unfortunately, hatred of our enemies and blind support for our side.

Patriotism is easily fuelled by the idea that in order to be patriotic you have to hate your enemy. The Taliban government in Afghanistan is the enemy for sheltering bin Laden who is the root cause of the conflict.

This war on terrorism, however, seems to have an added concept all its own -- the idea that we are being patriotic by refusing to let the terrorists change our way of life. They will be defeating us if we allow that to happen. So, we should go about our business as usual, that is go to baseball, hockey and football games, fly on planes as we normally would, and attend to our business without undo attention to the disruption and fear swirling around us.

We should be out shopping in order to raise retail sales so the stock market will recover.This call to a patriotism that is expressed by clinging stubbornly to our way of life, sets up its own internal conflict in our minds. When bin Laden reportedly says that President Bush and his father, Bill Clinton, and others will be killed, when there are signs that anthrax has been sent to the media and others, when we hear that there are Canadian aircraft patrolling over Southern Ontario, and when we exercise our imaginations a little and think about how easy it would be to really disrupt our way of life it is hard to go about business as usual.

Yet that is what seems to be happening if you believe reports out of the US. The way that the US government proposes to resolve this conflict (and the Canadian government has been very silent since Chretiens initial calls for wisdom, patience, and long-term solutions to very complex problems) is to follow the leader. If you happen to disagree with bombing Afghanistan, you arent patriotic.

President Bush laid all of this on the line (probably unwittingly) when he publicly reacted to criticism from Canadians and left Canada out of the nine nations he thanked for being supportive. He first came up with the ingenious idea that Canada is like a brother and you dont have to thank brothers. Then he went on to say that what really bothered him was that some Canadians seemed to be using this issue to promote divisiveness when we should all be standing together. Plainly, no criticism of him or his governments policies will be tolerated at this time. Maybe it will be possible to stifle criticism that is certainly easier to do when the bombing is, for now, far away on the other side of the world, and from reports coming out of Afghanistan there have only been about 300 innocent civilians killed.

However, the people I talk to in and around Sharbot Lake thank me for what I have written in past issues of the paper, and almost without exception say that they agree with me - although I am sure that there are those who quite vehemently disagree. It seems as if ordinary Canadians arent buying the rhetoric. Those I talk to are very troubled, and dont think that bombing Afghanistan will do anything but escalate terrorism. The US doesnt seem to be winning the war of words with Canadians.

Instead of going about business as usual, we should regard the recent terrorist activities as a wake-up call, and see what we can do to change our way of life and do our business differently; how we can, through constructive criticism, based on patience and wisdom, find ways to help the US act so that they can reclaim the moral authority and respect they once had as the leading democratic country in the world.

In the meantime, it seems very likely that we will have to live with a kind of chaos that most North Americans have never experienced before. This chaos is not going to be reduced by shopping and bombing Afghanistan. We are slipping into a kind of mass induced stupidity if we think it is going to.

However, as my mother-in-law is fond of saying, Life goes on, - and for my part I need to bring some more news stories to our readers, some of it good news: like the story of the success of the Sharbot Lake Pharmacy; the contribution that Will Cybulski is making to his community through his reporting and work as a volunteer coordinator; and the good work that the Sharbot Lake Lions Club has done for the community over the last 50 years. I also would like to write a story on how nice it is to drive to Kingston on a newly fixed Road #38 a success story in its own right but some of those stories will be for next week.