Stephen Hayes is too young to remember the era of the
Vietnam War. Those of us old enough to remember it will never forget the
“Pentagon Speak” that came with it. And those who do research on the subject of
usage of language during crises find that the habit of mutilating the language
is an old one except that it is done differently at different times, and in
different cultures.
And so, you have Stephen F. Hayes writing an article in
which he discusses the subject under the title: “Obama's Fantasy-Based Foreign
Policy.” It was published in the Weekly Standard edition of March 17, 2014, a
version of which is posted in the current online edition. He makes no mention
of the historical basis for playing with the language in order to convey
certain ideas and certain impressions, thus leaves the readers with the false
impression that the habit started only now, and only under the Obama
Administration.
Although it is easy to catch National Security Adviser Susan
Rice running off the mouth thoughtlessly at times, she did not commit a blunder
when on February 23, 2014 she appeared on the television show Meet the Press,
and said something about the situation in Ukraine in response to a question.
But Hayes believes that she did, and he joins the chorus of those attacking the
Administration for everything that it does and does not do; for everything that
it says and does not say.
Mindful that when she speaks, the world hears her – and that
Moscow where Putin sits is part of this world – Susan Rice responded tactfully
to a question that probably was meant to put her on the spot. Asked if Russia might invade Ukraine , she explained that this
would be a return to the mentality of the Cold War era. It will serve no one,
she went on to say, and even if Putin sees the world this way, America does
not because it is not in its interests to do so.
Stephen Hayes lurched on that, and described it as “a
remarkable transparent case of pretending the world is what we wish it to be,
rather than seeing it as it is.” When you're hit with something like this, it
is easy to ask: What went on in his head that made him draw that conclusion?
But this would be the wrong question to ask because the pertinent question is
this: “What was missing in his head when he drew that conclusion?
The answer is that the world was missing. Hayes and people
like him believe there is no one in the world but them and their entourage.
They have not the foggiest concept of people existing outside their group, in a
world out there that is constantly analyzing, and always making use of
everything they hear come out of America ,
and everything they see that is done in America .
And while oblivious of the fact that there is something
outside the gathering surrounding him, Hayes and those like him are handicapped
by something else too. For example, he reports that on February 28, 2014,
Russian troops poured into Ukraine
and that the Obama Administration described it not as an invasion but an
“uncontested arrival.” And this designation, said the Administration, helps to
better understand the new developments.
Later, President Obama warned that America will
stand with the international community to inflict a cost if the Russians
follow-up with a real military intervention. But this is only “the snarl of a
puppy,” says Hayes, in an obvious call for a more robust response, perhaps
something in the order of the full-throated bark of a pit bull. What he fails
to understand is that this would not have scared the Russians but would have
caused them to close their minds with regard to more suggestions or more
warnings coming from Washington .
To understand how some people came to be like that, we go
back to history. Those who lived through the decades of the Sixties and
Seventies remember not only the Vietnam War but also the culture that prevailed
at the time. And in that culture, there was a kind of separation between the
press and the governing officials. The people of the media reported on what the
government was doing without telling it what to do; and the government
officials left the press alone, holding back on criticism and any suggestion as
to how the press should do its job.
This unwritten protocol began to break down with the war,
and later with Watergate. It got worse with the passage of time, resulting
after four decades, in people like Hayes who now hunger so much for the power
to rule the world, they believe that the American military is a kind of video
game sitting there for them to play with. They view its commander-in-chief, the
President of the Republic, as the joystick that should give them access to the
figurines on the screen. And in the way that they have no concept of the fact
there is a world out there listening to America ,
they also have no concept of people dying every time that America gets
involved in a war. Of all their handicaps, this one is their greatest.
This being the case, Hayes seizes on the term
“de-escalation” to denounce the Administration that used it, accusing it of
delusion. And this is the point at which he dresses a contrast between the
terms used in what he calls the fantasy world of the Obama Administration, and
what he calls the real world. To this end, he objects to the use of expressions
like: workplace violence, isolated extremist, one-off, spontaneous and
reformer. Instead of that, he would rather use: jihadist, Al Qaeda trained
operative, attack launched by a terrorist group, brutal dictator and so on.