How We Talk About War: Financial vs. Moral Language

  • Thomas Friedman says he has… “nothing but regret for the excessive price that America and Iraq have had to pay in lives and treasure.” 
  • Mitt Romney says… “The decision to pull our troops out [of Afghanistan] before that, they believe, would put at risk the extraordinary investment of treasure and blood which has been sacrificed by the American military.”

First of all, I did not realize that we were financing these wars with gold ingots and pirate booty. Or that you could invest blood. Linguistic flaws aside, I’m well aware that these two lovely people are obviously not arguing the same point… but in these two phrases they are both looking at war not so much in terms of humanity and morality, or evaluating it based on intention and geopolitical consequence, but in terms of quantifiable, statistical, count-the-bodies, count-the-costs, capitalist terminologies. This isn’t a war, it’s an investment and the risk is to your pocketbook, not to your humanity.  I find this an interesting element of much of the nation’s current discussions about these wars.

Bonus feature: read Belén Fernández point out a choice handful of Thomas Friedman’s inaccuracies and confusions in this LRB blog post.

Pictures via.

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  1. canon-7d-body-only-best-price reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  2. photosnew reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  3. abagond reblogged this from lawd-knows
  4. lawd-knows reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook and added:
    most dehumanizing, money centered plain enigma
  5. minigigi reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  6. shndw reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  7. abjv reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
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  13. thehermitkrab reblogged this from randomactsofchaos
  14. zhounder reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  15. emerycatt reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook and added:
    country is always...no longer phases us,...giving up our...
  16. selfuncontained reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  17. benjaminapple reblogged this from salgentile
  18. salgentile reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook and added:
    far removed from the actual human costs...financial euphemisms we use
  19. politicalthinker reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  20. whatswrongwiththispicture reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
  21. unverifiableclaims reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook and added:
    My take: Bless her...slogging through anything even peripherally associated
  22. nunorml reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook
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  26. ashocknotakiss said: There is a really great article by Carol Cohn about how the way national defence is discussed precludes ever thinking about the morals of it all. It sounds crazy for about the first half but by the end it makes so much sense.
  27. warrior-knight reblogged this from thepoliticalnotebook

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