WELL, WHAT'LL IT BE, BOYS... A WAR OR A GLOBAL STRUGGLE?

Jim Moore | Aug 06 2005

In the advertising, a.k.a mind influencing, business the last thing a smart agency executive does is ignore the experts he hired to improve things, then overrides the decisions they come up with, and goes off on his own dogmatic, egomaniacal course--- as much as telling his creative team they’re wrong, he knows best, so back to your drawing boards.

Hardly were the words out of my computer--- in which I had almost seriously suggested that Bush should have called this Iraq escapade Occupational Therapy and let it go at that--- when the New York Times breaks with the story of more sloganeering in the governmental ranks, leading to a rift between the CEO of America and his top advisers.

I thought I explained clearly enough in my last article the hidden reason that administration officials had changed the slogan “war on terror” to an easier-to-swallow slogan (though not as easy to say or understand) “global struggle against violent extremism.” Sorry. I guess my explanation didn’t take.

Without having to re-explain the simple advertising maxim I had stated earlier: that when the slogan of a campaign begins to wear this, it loses its appeal and needs an “adjustment” to regain the public’s interest, suffice to say that that’s what Bush’s mind-twisters did, and I merely told you non-advertising folks why they did it and how the procedure works.

So now, Bush, like the top man of the ad firm who can’t keep his hands off the creative product, and abides no suggesting that a change in direction is needed, makes it clear that the phrase is still “war on terror”, period. No changes. No new direction. No softening the language. No broadening the concept. I’m the boss, says Bush, and when I say it’s a war on terror, then, by God, that’s what it is!

And to prove it, he said so five times in a speech in Grapevine, Texas.

To demonstrate the administration’s see-sawing, total confusion. and juvenile ambivalence on this crazy subject, consider the disparity between Bush’s reiterative position of framing the conflict primarily in “military terms”, and General Myers hinting last week that a new "non-military" slogan was coming, “If something is a war, then you think of people in uniform as the solution.” How much genuflecting will the good general have to do to stay in the good graces of his boss after that remark?

Secretary Rumsfeld is also doing some genuflecting of his own. “Some will ask,” he said, “are we still engaged in a war on terror? It’s a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept 11. The only way to defend against terrorism is to go on the attack.”

No, Mr. Secretary, this is not a “war.” War is a misnomer. Wars have beginnings and endings. With your definition we could call any continuous acts of street violence in any country a war. Rather, we are in an endless series of deadly skirmishes with an enemy that cannot be beaten without blowing up the whole country. Even then, which country comes next?

Call it what you will, but Bush is dead wrong. A “war” it is not, even though he insists on using the word to keep the illusion going, and the American people hyped up and on edge.

An afterthought: In a recent 47-minite speech, Bush used the term “war on terrorism” at least 13 times---even though his speech was mostly about domestic policy. Now, you would think that the average intelligent (?) listener would say to himself, Whoa, you were talking about domestic problems, Mister President, and boom, you suddenly, for seemingly no reason, segued into that scary phrase “war on terrorism” no less than 13 times in 47 minutes. What is that, Sir, a fetish of yours, an uncontrollable utterance, a irresistible force making it impossible for you to mouth it without fear of being dubbed a war freak?

Or have you, sir, really sold yourself on the need to keep selling the American public on the word “terrorism” in order to keep this winless charade going for all eternity if necessary--- that is, if our firepower and manpower hold out?

This 4th grade elocutionary exercise has become so ridiculous that it has kept the cue-card writers for late-night comedians working overtime trying to make light of a glaring Bush fault, to wit: his obsession with the word terror. Or is it the comedians themselves who find it difficult to transform this kind of unfunny rhetoric into guffaw-able one-liners?

Finally, speaking for Rumsfeld, this, from Mr. Di Rita, a Pentagon spokesman: “The secretary doesn’t feel that this is push back. He feels it’s an important clarification.”

Yeah? Tell that to any savvy advertising person, and generate a few of your own laughs.