Terrorism Essay: Metaphors for Terror :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Metaphors for Terror   The administrations framings and reframings and its search for metaphors should be noted. The initial framing was as a crime with victims and perpetrators to be brought to legal expert and punished. The crime frame entails law, courts, lawyers, trials, sentencing, appeals, and so on. It was hours before crime changed to contend with casualties, enemies, military action, war powers, and so on.   Donald Rumsfeld and other administration officials have pointed out that this situation does not fit our understanding of a war. T present are enemies and casualties all right, but no enemy army, no regiments, no tanks, no ships, no air force, no battlefields, no strategic targets, and no form victory. The war frame just doesnt fit. Colin Powell had always argued that no troops should be committed without specific objectives, a clear and achievable definition of victory, a clear exit strategy-and no open-ended commitments. But he has pointed out that none of these is present in this war.   Because the concept of war doesnt fit, there is a frantic search for metaphors. First, Bush called the terrorists cowards-but this didnt seem to work too well for martyrs who willing sacrificed their lives for their moral and religious ideals. More recently he has spoken of smoking them out of their holes as if they were rodents, and Rumsfeld has spoken of drying up the swamp they live in as if they were snakes or lowly swamp creatures. The conceptual metaphors here are Moral Is Up Immoral Is Down (they are lowly) and Immoral People Are Animals (that live close to the ground).   The use of the word evil in the administrations discourse works in the following way. In conservative, strict father morality (see Moral Politics, Chapter 5) evil is a palpable thing, a force in the world. To stand up to evil you have to be morally strong. If youre weak, you let evil triumph, so that weakness is a form of evil in itself, as is promoting weakness. Evil is inherent, an essential trait, that determines how you will act in the world. Evil people do evil things. No further explanation is necessary. There can be no social causes of evil, no religious rationale for evil, no reasons or arguments for evil. The enemy of evil is good. If our enemy is evil, we are inherently good. Good is our essential disposition and what we do in the battle against evil is good.