Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

Say What?

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We would forgive the folks in a memory care unit for this mistake, but it is unforgiveable at the Presidential level.

Language matters. In my nearly 40 years of writing about political communication, rarely have I heard a President misspeak with so little apparent awareness. You probably know where this is going. The moment was a few weeks ago when the Iraq air attack was explained by the President as an “excursion,” which is an unambiguous term of English used to describe a pleasant trip, much like what a cruise line might offer off the coast of a tropical island. Excursions are meant to be fun. And a person usually pays something extra to make the trip with a guide.

Someone in the Whitehouse surely wrote a briefing note that initially explained and justified the coming military “incursion’ that would supposedly shock the Iraqi military. Excursions and incursions sound similar but are miles apart in what they imply. The accidental reversal of the terms would be an honest mistake for someone just learning the language. But this malapropism from a President suggests a seriously muddled brain, all the more so because the error of usage was pointed out to him in public and—I hope—by aides as well. Not only should a staffer have insisted he correct his usage, but they should have pointed out that the wrong term would make him look like a fool. But Trump didn’t stop, looking like the last person to worry about what is a serious error of cognition.

We would forgive the folks in a memory care unit for this mistake of standard usage. But it is unforgiveable at the Presidential level when the misuse is bound up with real lives that have been lost. It is the equivalent of calling a tyrannical leader a “depot,” or state-sanctioned executions as useful “detergents.”  These malapropisms can be funny when the speaker is in on the joke, which was usually the case with people in our recent past like George W. Bush Jr. and comedian Norm Crosby. But it is a grotesque reveal of stupidity when the user does not care about what is an unintended signifier.

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Living in a Rogue State

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The present war fits with an American pattern of unilateral and asymmetric warfare with severe “collateral damage.”

There is a grim pattern in the recent deaths of almost two hundred young school girls and others from what a growing consensus concludes was an American Tomahawk missile hitting Minab Iran. That the school was near a military target is no justification. It cannot help but lead older Americans to remember similar high civilian casualties caused by overwhelming American airpower in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran. The United States’ routinely shows an inability to avoid the “collateral damage” of civilian deaths in combat. Air power mistakenly feeds a sense of confidence when dropping bombs and firing missiles  keeps the chaos on the ground at a distance. It conceals the carnage and misery that follows.

The idea of a rogue state was apparently first used by the United States to describe various murderous dictatorships that shun more peaceful allies and ignore national borders. I think it fits well for this current moment, given the degree to which the Trump Administration has also shunned allies in their decision to act. An unprecedented lack of interest in working with partners except Israel makes this war a rogue act. Even worse, any authentic good reasons for this war were not adequately communicated to the American public. The President failed what is a primary obligation of the office.

To be sure, many nations like Iraq, North Korea, Israel, Venezuela and Iran have been bad actors in the world community. In the case of Iran, there is no question that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime was ruthless and cruel to its own people, and contributed to American deaths in what became interventionist fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fortunately, only a few nations have the yearning and means to attempt to subdue other countries by force. More civilized governments are not in the business of removing or assassinating leaders of a sovereign state.

There was also no immediate tactical reason for the U.S. to torpedo an Iranian warship visiting a port near Siri Lanka, with the result of 87 sailors killed more than 3,000 miles from their home base. But it fits with the American pattern of engaging in asymmetric warfare. What is obvious is that a dislogistic term invented by American policy-makers to describe uncontrolled interventionism is actually a self-own, describing American war acts as well as other foreign actors they have criticized.

Many conservatives and liberals in the media have described this most recent attack on Iran as a “war of choice.” That description means that there was no imperative to justify starting this war at this time. No wonder less than half of surveyed Americans support this fiasco. Shame rather than pride is probably the better reaction from those who are paying attention. Many might rightfully wonder what could be said to the parent of a daughter who was killed in the school room in Minab.