Doublespeak versus precise language

I heard a news commentator yesterday describing the ways that politicians use language. Obama seems to be replacing "the War on Terror" with a bureaucratic term relating to "contingencies". The term "War on Terror" is clearly a slogan meant to gain emotional support while obscuring what is really happening. It seems to me that Obama is budgeting for "the military occupation" of Iraq and Afghanistan, seeing as how troops there are occupying countries whose governments were overthown by coalitions led by U.S. forces. In other locations the U.S. government may be engaged in "counter-terrorist" efforts designed to eliminate the terrorists themselves and disrupt their networks.

"Enhanced interrogation methods" or "torture"? Cheneyspeak or Obamaspeak? Are there "standard" interrogation methods? I suppose that there are methods that are commonly taught to police, military intelligence and CIA interrogators, which might be seen as the standards. If so, there could well be enhancements of those methods that are morally acceptable, such as use of computer analysis methods to aid the interrogators. There are also methods that we might find morally unacceptable that we would not classify as torture, such as use of some drugs during the interrogation process. There are clearly things that we should consider torture. It seems pretty clear that prisoners of American forces were in some cases tortured over the last eight years. Unfortunately, the perfectly appropriate efforts of the Justice Department to define the boundaries between unacceptable and acceptable methods seem to have gone wrong in the Bush administration. Lets hope the Obama folk can do better.

The health care debate is going to raise another set of semantic issues. Are the parties to the debate "stakeholders" as in poker games, or "special iterests" as if some parties interests were more "special" than those of other parties. And of course, what are those "interests". Who opposes good health or adequate health services? Who opposes fair compensation for the efforts put forth in providing services? Demonization of people who balance their interest portfolios differently, in part because of differing understanding of the uncertainties of alternative reforms, need not be demonized.

The esthetics of political doubletalk are ugly, but the effect on the political process is serious. I hope that the media will work to speak accurately, and to call politicians who seek to spin their meaning via vague and misleading slogans.