The metaphors we use to describe crises determine the way in which we respond to them. So far, the only metaphor to emerge from the ashes of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon has been the metaphor of war. Only war, it seemed, could capture the horror of flaming planes slicing through the World Trade Center towers, a river of people in suits and high heels fleeing through the financial district. Only war was big enough to contain the anger and sadness we feel.
But the rhetoric of war may shape our thinking and our actions in ways that we cannot afford, making it more difficult for us to effectively fight the terrorist threat. We have already seen that the metaphor of the "war" on drugs has actually made it harder for us to win that struggle, by turning the victims of the war into the enemy and by drawing lines between those on our side and theirs.
In our response to the terrorist attacks, the failure of language is even more dangerous. Guided by the metaphor of war, we are on our way to turning it into a reality.
The language of war makes us search for nations to stand in for our nationless enemies, and elides the reality that the threat comes from people living in many countries, including our own. We can already see how this approach destabilizes potential coalitions. India protests that if the dividing lines are national, Pakistan should stand with "them," rather than "us." The governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan struggle to justify to their citizenry their offers of support to what looks like war against another Islamic nation.
Equally important, the metaphor of war discourages concern for the conditions that may lead to terrorism, even making such concerns appear unpatriotic. It prevents examination of our government's policies in the Middle East, such as the devastation of the Iraqi people through sanctions, which make it easier to portray us as the enemies of Islam. It blinds us to the suffering in the countries in which terrorist groups take root.
I suggest that we draw our analogies from another source, one that may provide a better framework for containing and ultimately eradicating the global threat of terrorism. That source is the language of public health and epidemiology- the language of vectors, modes of transmission and conditions of propagation. This framework would allow us to turn our attention to the conditions in which terrorism arises, and take steps to change them.
As with infectious disease, global terrorism is spread by complexly linked groups based in many countries along many paths of transmission. Treating terrorism as a disease would avoid the dangerous fiction of us and them, and the temptation to draw lines of religion, nationality and race.
Smallpox, which killed three times more people than did wars during the last century, was eradicated in 1980 by perhaps the most successful multilateral effort the world has ever seen. It was destroyed by the efforts of thousands across the globe working, under World Health Organization leadership, to tirelessly survey the population and immediately identify and contain those with the disease. Drawing from the language of public health would underscore that, as with the campaign to end smallpox, any campaign to end terrorism must be truly multilateral and more a campaign of intelligence than of weapons.
Analogizing terrorism to infectious disease would highlight that each nation must recognize the threat within its own borders and participate in the effort to identify vectors wherever they reside. It would stress that the focus must be on the lines of transmission - of money and intelligence, as well as of people - that enable terrorism's spread. It would legitimize attention to the poverty and oppression in which ideologies of violence flourish. It might even change our goal from vengeance to safety and healing.
Although the language of public health has its own dangers, its metaphors are those we need now. Our lack of words adequate to describe the horror that left thousands dead should not lead us to a war that will leave thousands more dead.
Bethany R. Berger is a research professor of Indian law at the University of Connecticut School of Law.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any phone. http://phone.yahoo.com