Andrew Bacevich’s essay on what to call the last twelve years of war got me to thinking about how often many of us use euphemisms in contemporary debates to refer to acts of war. As a general rule, the more abstract and bloodless the description of a proposed policy is, the easier it seems to be for most people to ignore the likely consequences of the policy. Conor Friedersdorf comments on the use of the phrase “no-fly zone” to obscure the significance of what hawks are demanding:
The question before us is whether America should wage war in Syria by bombing its weapons, maintaining a presence in its airspace, and shooting at its pilots if they take off. On hearing the phrase “no-fly-zone,” how many Americans would realize all that is involved?
Apparently there are many that would not know what is required. Indeed, many respondents to polls that ask about imposing a “no-fly zone” in Syria don’t seem to understand that bombing Syrian air defenses is a necessary part of creating a “no-fly zone,” and more than a few proponents of imposing one intentionally minimize the significance of what they are proposing in order to make it more palatable. Because a “no-fly zone” is so often presented as a low-risk, “easy” military option that could change the course of a conflict, it often polls better than more explicitly aggressive military options. The public didn’t support such measures in Libya and definitely doesn’t support them in Syria, which is why so many Syria hawks rely on the confusion and obfuscation that the label “no-fly zone” provides. The phrase “no-fly zone” gives the respondent the impression that the U.S. can somehow “do something” with its military in response to an ongoing conflict without committing itself to a new war, but this is simply untrue. It also conceals the extent to which the U.S. would be waging an unprovoked and illegal war against another country with all of the death and destruction that entails.