Last night I attended a lecture by George Lakoff at the Ruth Group in Sausalito, CA. Dr. Lakoff took the opportunity to reacquaint everyone with some of the concepts from Moral Politics and to introduce them to his forthcoming book on the word Freedom and what it means to liberals and conservatives.
While I always find these broad points of his to be interesting, I sat up straightest for his timely advice for those who oppose the war in Iraq. His advice boiled down to two main points: we need to start using a moral frame to discuss the issue, as Republicans have, and we need to stop thinking of it as a war.
Let's start with what Republicans are saying versus what Democrats are saying. Unless you've been living in a spider hole in the desert for the past few months, you've noticed that Republicans have an unhealthy obsession with three words: cut and run. Originally a nautical term, the non-tarry, non-salty ear hears it as "leave all my brothers in arms with their soft underbelly exposed while I save my own hide." It puts the pragmatic reduction of forces in a frame of immoral selfishness, failure, and cowardice.
The Democratic defense of the opinion held by the majority of Americans that the war is despicable and should be stopped as soon as possible has not been adequate. It should be an easy winner, since it has the backing of the majority, but Democrats have been finding ways to represent the majority and still lose since the days of Reagan. At any rate, the Democratic positioning has essentially bought right into the taunt lobbed by the Republican frame that we are only interested in our own selfish wellbeing.
The example I will use is John Kerry's proposed counter, "lie and die." The implication is that if we stay the course, we will be complacent in letting our own doom approach and consume us. Firstly, this mimics the structure of "cut and run," thus giving our opponent free PR by continually referencing his definition of our platform. But secondly, it readily admits that you are saying "screw you, I'm losing so I'm taking my ball and going home."
The other problem is even referring to it is a war. Referring to it as a war makes sense when you want to make Bush look bad for declaring "mission accomplished" 2000 or so US troop deaths ago, but it doesn't serve the long-term interests of withdrawal. As Dr. Lakoff points out, when you look at the basic definition of a war, and you realize that it means a formal invasion of one country by another involving conventional weapons and battlefields and leaders, then it becomes clear that that part of the mission had indeed been accomplished at the time Bush appeared in his preposterous flight suit.
Furthermore, once you start talking about how the war ended there, you can start describing our current involvement for what it really is: an occupation. I see peaceniks protesting about occupation, and slogans like "US Out of Iraq" lend support to this frame, but I don't see a lot of pundits and politicoes embracing it. Which is really too bad, because a war of good against evil, no matter how badly it goes, is not something you can morally disengage from short of total victory. An occupation, on the other hand, is something that was immoral from the moment it started. It is forcing your will on others through your military, it is senselessly killing your nation's children for an imperialist caprice, it is an injust action that engenders contempt and disrespect from its subject people and those like them the world over. In short, it is all the things that progressives know the "war" to be.