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5 Phrases To Be Thrown Under The Bus

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By Paul Avallone, author of Tattoo Zoo

Hand in hand with the degradation of our culture and the corruption of our political discourse comes the degradation and corruption of our language. Orwell’s “Double Speak” becomes “Triple Speak” and “Quadruple Speak” and “Quintuple Speak” in a repetitive vomit of phrases that run counter to our common sense. A vomit of phrases meant to first confuse us, then dull us, then numb us and finally shepherd us into submissive complacency.

It’s time to clean up our language, clean up our thinking, sharpen our awareness, and a good place to start is to put through a shredder these five phrases. In no particular order:

1)  Boots on the ground

In less than a year this phrase has worn thin to the point of being grating, like fingernails on a chalkboard. In particular, its universal usage in the negative, as in, “No boots on the ground.” Precisely meaning, America will not participate in X or Y war with soldiers who could actually be wounded or killed. Five thousand U.S. military personnel and contractors presently deployed to X war in Iraq to “degrade” ISIS is advertised and bragged to be “no boots on the ground”, making a charade of the phrase. Kill it—put a stake through its heart.

Any politician who continues to use the phrase should be shouted down, harangued to admit, “So you’re guaranteeing no coffins in the ground?” Flag-draped metal caskets, that is, brought back home here for burial. Dare the politicians to promise “No coffins”, which is really the single true meaning behind the double-speak of “no boots”—that we’re going to be involved in X or Y war, but don’t worry, American plebeians, no one’s going to die.

2)  For the children

These three words have become the guilt-laden justification for political policies intended to cement the nanny state. They are an outgrowth of the yellow diamond-shaped Baby On Board placards dangling from car windows thirty years ago. Remember those? As if we the drivers in nearby cars were supposed to be more cautious and careful not to rear-end or sideswipe that Baby On Board car because the fresh-out-of-the-womb living tissue cargo aboard was more precious than the driver or the spouse or the even teenagers in the backseat.

Worse, the phrase is a manifestation of our culture’s placing center-of-the-universe value on the coddled, spoiled, chore-challenged one or two children in our 21st century pseudo families. At one time, families of five and seven and ten children could not crown one or two as royalty nor allow any the luxury of not actually participating in the sustenance and maintenance of the household. Such as, milking the cows, plowing the fields, weeding the garden, slaughtering the hogs, caring for the younger siblings.

Take “for the children” to the woodshed, give it a good whipping then lock it in there, and bring back into daily usage “children should be seen and not heard.”

3)  Too big to fail

This phrase is insulting, and it gnaws my gut to hear politicians use it to explain why they’re raiding public coffers to save corporate billionaire cronies who have, yes, failed and don’t deserve to remain in business. Failure is a great teacher, and not just to those who fail but to those striving to achieve. Let the failures suffer the dissolution and consequences of their behavior, and banish this phrase to a rusty filing cabinet in some huge government bureaucracy (you pick it, any of them) that itself is too big to produce. Better, too zombie-like to kill.

4)  Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

At one time, until recently, this phrase made perfect sense, because it defined the Three Levels of Wartime Interrogation. They are: #1, basic interrogation (routine questioning, like TV cops do in those foam padded rooms); #2, psychological interrogation (loud music, physical discomfort of hot and cold, hunger and thirst, and threats of imminent physical harm); and #3, physical torture (bamboo under the fingernails, voltage to the genitals, blowtorch to the skin, soldering iron to the eyeballs, let your imagination be your guide).

Under those unambiguous definitions, the actual techniques of “advanced interrogation” fell completely under #2. Which included waterboarding—physical discomfort and the terror of drowning, without actual physical harm. The human pyramids and dog-leashed prisoners of Abu Ghraib changed all that, and the media turned everything that was not #1 into torture, plain and simple.

Torture is considered immoral and illegal in our culture, so #2 is no longer an option, it can’t be practiced, which eliminates the need for the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques”. All military and Agency-spook interrogation should hereafter simply be called “questioning.” Leave “interrogation” out of it; and don’t neglect to provide the detainee with hot coffee and chai and donuts. Entrust the actual “interrogation” to the indigenous ally forces, and “see no torture, hear no torture, speak no torture.” Now that’s a phrase I can get behind.

As for “advanced interrogation techniques”, throw it out with the bathwater. When it becomes imperative that we learn the whereabouts of the Green Beret team missing for 72 hours somewhere in Fallujah, (all clad in flip-flops, mind you), turn the captured ISIS courier over to the Iraqi soldiers, leave the room, wash our hands, and don’t concern ourselves that we never see the chap again.

Guess what? You only have to do that once or twice. Then word gets out, the enemy knows you’re going to turn captives over to locals as savage as they themselves, and, but for those few who are intent upon dying as martyrs, those captured are going to sing in the polite, routine “questioning.”

5)  That’s not who we are

This phrase is used to justify our squeamishness to fight wars in the vicious, all-out, eye-for-an-eye manner necessary to defeat a savage enemy. It’s the phrase that does not allow us to torture an enemy who revels in torture. It goes hand-in-glove with the enhanced interrogation phrase above.

And how’s that working out for us? Our high-morality, timid “that’s not who we are” method of warfare has lost the last two wars (Iraq and, yes, Afghanistan, and if you believe otherwise with Afghanistan, you’re delusional). Perhaps we’d better figure out a different “who we are” if we want to start winning.

Anyone who tells me, “That’s not who we are,” when it is not I who has thrown the first punch, I for one want to be that “not who.” Sorry, pal, that is who I am. Imagine Churchill and Roosevelt letting Hitler know that “That’s not who we are.” They fire-bombed 25,000 civilians dead in Dresden. After the outcome of the war was not in doubt. Because without moral pretense they knew the who to be.

The phrase is a point of pride for civilized, well-fed, unthreatened elites, sitting high on their horses in moral certitude. Imprison them for a few years in a Siberian gulag and see exactly who they become. Like Dresden viewed at sunrise, it won’t be pretty.

But the phrase will be as it should be: charred ashes.

(As for the phrase “Thrown under the bus,” we’ll consider throwing it under the bus after next week’s 5 More Phrases to be Thrown Under the Bus)

Paul Avallone spent three-plus years in Afghanistan as a Green Beret then an embedded civilian journalist. His novel of the Afghan War, Tattoo Zoo was published in December.  

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