vivian shaw

Agitation and/or preparation in the media

I was thinking about the upcoming surge today, and it occurred to me that the language used by mainstream media to describe the US occupation in Afghanistan has shifted dramatically in the last year. Right now, I am seeing a lot of articles throw around the term “eight-year war,” which is awfully strange as this phrasing was rarely used in the seventh, sixth, and fifth years.

Here’s a quick comparison of mentions of the word “war” within one-page articles from the New York Times from 2004-2009.

September 2004: Article on elections in Afghanistan, 0 mentions of “war”

September 2005: A hindsight is 20/20 piece on US pulling out of Afghanistan by “next spring,” 0 mentions of “war”

September 2006: Talks a bit about drugs, 2 mentions of “war” (in the context of the “war on drugs”)

September 2007: Discussion on Canada’s involvement with Afghanistan, 0 mentions of “war”

September 2008: Article on shifted priorities from Iraq to Afghanistan, surprisingly 0 mentions of “war”

Let’s look at the last four months to now:
August 2009: Article on increased need for troops, 5 mentions of “war”

September 2009: Article about contractors in Afghanistan, 6 mentions of war

October 2009: Lead up to surge announcement, 16 mentions of “war”

November 2009: Anticipation of Obama’s speech and exit strategy, 7 mentions of “war”

This is by all measures an exercise, so by no means should this analysis be interpreted as my final view on this topic. But it does appear that a trend can be seen in the way that the New York Times, a liberal mainstream media establishment, adjusts its usage of bellicose language over the evolution of geopolitical strategy. I would be interested in doing a more in-depth study at some point on what these arguably subtle language gestures may do in accustoming “ordinary citizens” to the idea of state violence.