This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [log in to unmask] I don't usually like Safire's articles on language, but this one seems a good follow up to our discussion this week on Bush's use of the word "crusade." Max [log in to unmask] Every Conflict Generates Its Own Lexicon September 30, 2001 By WILLIAM SAFIRE You are about to embark upon a great crusade,'' General Eisenhower told his troops on the eve of D-Day; he later titled his memoirs ''Crusade in Europe.'' American presidents liked that word: Thomas Jefferson launched ''a crusade against ignorance,'' Theodore Roosevelt exhorted compatriots to ''spend and be spent in an endless crusade'' and F.D.R., calling for a ''new deal'' in his acceptance speech at the 1932 Democratic convention, issued ''a call to arms,'' a ''crusade to restore America to its own people.'' But when George W. Bush ad-libbed that ''this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while,'' his figure of speech was widely criticized. That's because the word has a religious root, meaning ''taking the cross,'' and was coined in the 11th century to describe the first military expedition of the Crusaders, European Christians sent to recover the Holy Land from the followers of Muhammad. The rallying-cry noun is offensive to many Muslims: three years ago, Osama bin Laden maligned U.S. forces in the Middle East as ''crusader armies spreading like locusts.'' In this case, a word that has traditionally been used to rally Americans was mistakenly used in the context of opposing a radical Muslim faction, and the White House spokesman promptly apologized. In the same way, Vice President Dick Cheney was chided for referring admiringly to Pakistanis as ''Paks.'' Steven Weisman of The New York Times asked, ''Is it conceivable that he would have used a similar slur with the Japanese?'' The shortening Paki is taken to be a slur, even when criticized as ''Paki-bashing,'' and Paks only slightly less so. In past military cooperation with Pakistan, U.S. service members used Paks as they would use Brits or Aussies, nationality nicknames no more offensive than Yanks. Cheney probably picked up Paks in his Pentagon days, but innocent intent is an excuse only once; now he is sensitized, as are we all. In the same way, when the proposed Pentagon label for the antiterror campaign was floated out as ''Operation Infinite Justice,'' a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations noted that such eternal retribution was ''the prerogative of God.'' Informed of this, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quickly pulled the plug on the pretentious moniker. Who coins these terms? Nobody will step forward; instead, software called ''Code Word, Nickname and Exercise Term System'' is employed to avoid responsibility; it spits out a list of random names from which commanders can choose. This avoidance of coinage responsibility leads to national embarrassment (which is finite justice). ''Operations,'' said Winston Churchill, ''ought not to be described by code words which imply a boastful and overconfident sentiment.'' Apropos of Churchill: in Bush's well-received address to the joint session of Congress calling for a ''war on terror,'' the president said with impressive intensity, ''We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.'' This evocation of an earlier rhetoric of resolution (which his aides, who turned out the speech in nine hours, insist was not researched) could not have been lost on Prime Minister Tony Blair, an honored guest in the audience. In a speech broadcast to America on Feb. 9, 1941, Churchill said: ''We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. . . . Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.'' (Note where the Brit placed the shalls to heighten the expression of resolve, and the will expressing futurity before the stressed finish. Bush held to the more American will not, in front of the emphasized tire, falter and fail.) The Bush speech showed a heightened concern for connotation. In an exegesis of his prepared speech, this former speechwriter looked for the words not chosen. For example, Bush castigated the power-seeking terrorists as those who ''follow in the path of Fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism.'' The word left out of the series beginning with Fascism and Nazism is, of course, Communism; however, the administration is seeking help from Russia and other former Soviet republics, in which many former and present Communists live -- hence, the less specific, all-encompassing totalitarianism. The tactful substitution preceded the most original phrase in the speech, pointing to the end of the path of all those isms: ''history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.'' The other noun that was not there in the Bush address to Congress was defense, as in the hottest phrase in Washington today, homeland defense. The earliest citation I can find is by China's Xinhua News Agency, reporting on April 11, 1977, about ''the mobilization of the puppet army and the 'homeland defense reserve forces' '' by South Korea. Twenty years later, a panel of experts recommended to Defense Secretary William Cohen that a new armed-forces mission considering biological threats be called Defense of the Homeland. In February 2001, a commission headed by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman delivered a prescient report that the nation was vulnerable to terrorist attack. It called for a cabinet-level agency amalgamating customs, law enforcement, Coast Guard and other nonmilitary federal agencies coordinating homeland defense. The Hart-Rudman report received little attention in the media or at the White House. On the eve of the President's speech, White House sources told The Associated Press he would create a ''Homeland Defense Security Office'' -- a coordination group, not a whole new department. At the last minute, the word defense was dropped. Why? I'm told because it ''sounded defensive,'' and more probably, ''protecting the internal security of the homeland would be confused with the war-making mission of the Department of Defense.'' Thus, in the new lexicon of the war on terror, security means ''defense''; defense means ''attack.'' http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/30/magazine/30ONLANGUAGE.html?ex=1002733234&ei=1&en=0763c099c57f6d44 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at [log in to unmask] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [log in to unmask] Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/