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Re: [casi] Metaphor and War: Part 1




Elga,

I see this differently. Of course, when Lakoff wrote
that article in December 1990, people were seeing
things differently, and the analysis of the
manipulation depended very much on how the "Kuwait
issue" was treated. People were presented with an
image of a big country with the fourth largest army in
the world (sic), threatening a small and innocent
state and occupying it... No one told the people the
history of the crisis or its origins, just like
everyone is today presented with the same lies
regarding Iraq's history and its "creation" by the
British..

In retrospect, it would seem that Lakoff did not
perhaps tackle the issue of the inventions and
fabrications as he should have been. But at that time,
no one knew that the incubator story was a
fabrication, or that the images of the oil pollution
attributed to Iraq in the waters of the Gulf was
another fabrication… It was only after the end of the
aggression that the truth began to come out…

So I tend to believe that Lakoff did not intend to
analyze the propaganda campaign, rather the way
Metaphorical thought, which as he said is "neither
good nor bad" was used to manipulate. He does argue
the need to understand how this metaphorical thought
was used to bring the world to the war and gives
examples of its use. But like I said, there was not
enough information available at that time to
understand how deep and complicated the whole campaign
was.

The current aggression is a very good example. People
in the West, protected by the fact that they only
follow CNN, Fox or the BBC, do not see the other side
of issues. Thus, the majority of those people,
especially in the US and UK still believe that those
Iraqi civilians were killed by Iraqi missiles or that
they were killed by mistake; that Iraqi soldiers are
disguising in civilians clothes (to justify arresting
civilians); and the rest of lies and fabrications. If
one were to follow news from other satellite channels
in Arabic, where reporters give live reports and
images from Iraq, one would see a different story
altogether.

So the propaganda campaign has only succeeded in the
US and UK because people still trust the authorities,
even after their lies are exposed. In the Arab world,
where people DO NOT trust the authorities, the story
is different!!
How would one explain the continuing support for
Blair's claims in the UK, when one report was a copy
and the other was a forgery??

Today, the US claimed its tanks were in the centre of
Baghdad, when all reporters, including those of
Reuters and AFP, in Baghdad, said this was not true...
First they said they were there to stay. When Iraq
said that was a lie, they said they only went in
"briefly"...

I posted Lakoff's articles only to give an idea of the
similarity of the propaganda campaign of 1991 and now.
Even some of the terminology is the same…

Hassan


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