Words of Power
Just look at the individual words which we have recently co-opted from the US military.
When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies — al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban — have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!
A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ — for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.
(via Robert Fisk)
