Lakoff on NPR: An Inconvenient Truth

[Admiral Loinpresser]

Just heard George Lakoff square off against Frank Luntz (Republican pollster) about Iraq on NPR. The interviewer framed the debate on Luntz's homecourt with a set up:

Yada, yada, yada, war in Iraq, yada, yada, Cut & Run, yada yada?

Luntz responded gratefully:

Yada, yada, Cut & Run, yada, yada!

At this point, I thought, sweet Jesus, what will Lakoff do about this?

Interviewer turning to Lakoff:

Yada, yada, Democratic leaders, yada, Cut & Run?

Lakoff answered by saying that Democrats must realize "an inconvenient truth" about Iraq-- that when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" he was right. The coalition army defeated Saddam's army and won the war three years ago. That for three years we have been involved in an "occupation." So there is no issue of winning a war, we won that. The issue is when we will end the occupation by bringing the troops home.

The interviewer then referenced Lakoff's phrase about "an inconvenient truth," saying Gore might run in 2008. Lakoff responded by saying that Gore has been indeed telling truth that many people don't want to hear, but it is truth nonetheless. He then went on to use the term "occupation" in linking the power of Gore's environmental message to the message Dem leaders must use in framing the debate about Iraq-- when will we end the occupation in Iraq.

Luntz complained, trying to mock Lakoff, noting that Lakoff used the term "occupation" in almost every sentence he spoke. Lakoff responded something like "When you have heard the term 'occupation' as many times as you have heard the phrase 'war on terror,' then perhaps you will have something to complain about."

I was amazed at how well he took control of the debate, as well as his cleverness in using the high public approval of Gore's message as a fulcrum for catching the interviewer off guard and totally changing the thread of discussion. A master of rhetorical judo!

[jean]

1. yada yada yada LAKOFF RULES yada yada!

[glitch]

14. lol! nt

[SheepyMcSheepster]

2. Wow, I like this!

This is a great way to talk about Iraq and getting out. :kick:
I'm impressed.

[lindisfarne]

3. Lakoff is wrong - yes, we are occupying, but we haven't won any war.

We may have captured key members of the Hussein government but the war still isn't won. He's playing games with semantics. The war between the USA and Iraqis has simply added an element: a civil war of Iraqis vs. Iraqis, in addition to the USA vs. (some) Iraqis. The USA does not enjoy the support of the majority of Iraqis.

[Just Me]

4. Did he say we were winning?

:shrug: Kindly provide more details via transcript.

[IndyOp]

8. Not 'we are winning' - we won 'the war' 3 years ago - see Thom

Hartmann's article - Lakoff is echoing Thom...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0619-22.htm

[jean]

12. here's a transcript, done as I listened to the interview

Q: … “cut and run” connotes weakness. Is this something that is going to be difficult for the Democrats to counter?

Lakoff: It depends on what they do.

The question is whether they’ll actually be able to tell the inconvenient truth of the matter, which is, that George Bush was right about something. A war has to do with two armies that fight over land, and that war was over three years ago, when our army defeated Saddam Hussein’s.

At that point an occupation began. An occupation isn’t something you win. An occupation is something, that, you’re there ‘til you leave.

(Luntz interrupts, interviewer holds him off and asks him this)

Q: If you start to hear the Democrats use this word again and again … this current conflict in Iraq as an occupation instead of a war, what does this mean for the Republicans and how do they counter that?

Luntz - (paraphrasing) interesting challenge … both sides don’t listen to each other, I do, I read all the speeches, underline words and phrases to see what they’re using … if it’s coming from the leadership, then the rest of the party’s going to follow.

Q: George, I have to ask you about a phrase I’ve heard you mention: “inconvenient truth.” which also happens to be the name of a movie that’s presently in theaters, a film by Al Gore, former presidential candidate, possible future presidential candidate. Any coincidence?

Lakoff: It’s not a coincidence at all. Look, Al Gore is telling a Truth that people didn’t want to hear. It’s a Truth that really, really matters. And this is a Truth that really, really matters .

Nobody wants to hear that we have an occupying army. But it’s true. And it takes political courage to say it.

Luntz: And what he’s trying to do, what listeners need to understand, is he figures, and to some degree he’s correct, that if he repeats the word “occupation” enough times, that will change the public’s perception. And - - -

(Lakoff interrupts, interviewer asks this)

Q: Frank, is it possible George has taken that lesson from the Republicans, because that does seem to be something the Republicans have used to great effect.

Luntz: Republicans have been on message. But not to the point of throwing in the same word in virtually every sentence of every response in this interview.

Lakoff: Think of the words, “War on Terror.” When you have heard “occupation” as many times as you have heard “War on Terror,” the country will understand a Truth.

Luntz: ... because the American people do believe we have a War on Terror because the terrorists have declared war on us.

Interviewer ended, saying she was out of time.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

13. Thanks for that.

I tried to download the Apple driver, but my software is too old.

The transcript is much better than my driving-while-listening recall.

[1932]

20. The occupation of Iraq is not helping the "war" against terror.

Luntz seems to want people to frame Iraq as part of the war on terror INSTEAD OF an occupation, as if it's either/or.

But even if you grant him that Iraq is part of a "war" on terror, you have to conced that the occupation of Iraq does nothing to prevent terrorism, and probably does a great deal to creat ill will towards the US that's not going to help Americans in the long or short run.

[ClassWarrior]

22. "War on Terror" is a rightwing frame. Don't fall for it.

How can you have a "war" on an abstract concept? You can't. Iraq isn't part of any sort of war. It's an occupation.

NGU.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

6. I think he is right both semantically and politically.

Semantically, I think winning a war has always meant inflicting sufficient damage on your opponent's population, economy or military that they sue for peace or quit resisting. In this case we invaded, took their capital and "major military operations" ceased, as famously announced by Bush's codpiece on the aircraft carrier. It doesn't mean, to me, that the invasion was successful in any strategic sense (it was a disaster). It just means we won a three week war, in the conventional use of the term.

Politically, I think Lakoff is right because if we are still fighting a war, then we can "lose" it, in some sense. At least that's how some Americans might view it. While most Americans (like most Iraqis) favor a US pullout, I believe it will be easier to accomplish in the American Congress if we focus on an "occupation," rather than a "war" in Iraq. It undercuts the "cut and run" rhetoric, as ably demonstrated by Lakoff today.

[peacetalksforall]

9. You're right. We won an 'objective' and then got lost because we

had no plan other than paying off certain Iraqis to create a demoracy and start the oil flow. Yes, this is now an occupation with an inconvenient tribal and political internal war. The way we know we are occupying is that we are constructing 'stuff' for OURSELVES and our oil - with some for Israel and the UK, with some at good rates for coalition partners.

But, I think that lemmings can follow the Lakoff simple answer more easily because there are fewer components to take issue with.

[BBG]

19. Not a War

No war was declared. We illegally invaded Iraq but no war was ever declared. This is NOT a war.

And this is not a game of semantics. It is the literal truth of the matter. This is not a war in Iraq.

[lindisfarne]

21. Welcome! And that's a good point. Bush keeps claiming "war powers"

but if my memory serves me right, he seems to do so in the context of the "war on terrorism" (not the "war in Iraq" which hasn't been declared). And since the "war on terrorism" will never end, his broader powers in wartime will never end. Although has Congress ever made a formal declaration of war on terrorism as mandated by Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution.

An interesting discussion of related issues is here:
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=2514
Waging War Over the Constitution and its Framers;
War Powers How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution
By Nicholas Thompson
Fellow

Los Angeles Times
August 14, 2005


Conservative judicial scholars love the Founding Fathers, and they have created a legal theory called "originalism" in which the Founders' words essentially are carved in stone. If you're stuck with a complicated legal question, just think about what James Madison would do. "The Constitution means what the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention and of the state ratifying conventions understood it to mean; not what we judges think it should mean," Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said in a 2001 speech.

Why do conservatives love originalism so? Partly it's because tightly tethering the law to one document, and to the men who wrote it, is said to reduce judicial discretion, and hence confusion. Originalism has the additional advantage of squashing liberal policy aims. Madison didn't have anything to say about gay rights or abortion, so states should be able to restrict them all they want.

But Peter Irons, a professor of political science at UC San Diego, wants to turn the sword of originalism back on its wielders. His theory, laid out in his new book, War Powers, is that the Founding Fathers wanted to severely cramp a president's ability to conduct wars. True originalists, Irons argues, should oppose the legality of the war in Iraq and much of how it's been carried out.

In making this argument, Irons is persuasive on one point: The Constitution gives Congress the power to "declare war," and it hasn't done so against Iraq. Congress did authorize the Iraq invasion, but it has not made a formal declaration of war as mandated by Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution.
<snip>

[Strelnikov_]

5. Thom Hartman Was The Originator Of The 'Occupation' Frame

as far as I can tell.

Seems to be really picking up steam.

[IndyOp]

7. YES!!! Thom Hartmann: Reclaim the Issues - "Occupation, Not War"

Published on Monday, June 19, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Reclaim the Issues - "Occupation, Not War"
by Thom Hartmann

Every time the media - or a Democrat - uses the phrase "War in Iraq" they are promoting one of Karl Rove's most potent Republican Party frames.

There is no longer a war against Iraq.

It ended in May of 2003, when George W. Bush stood below a "Mission Accomplished" sign aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and correctly declared that we had "victoriously" defeated the Iraqi army and overthrown their government.

Our military machine is tremendously good at fighting wars - blowing up infrastructure, killing opposing armies, and toppling governments. We did that successfully in Iraq, in a matter of a few weeks. We destroyed their army, wiped out their air defenses, devastated their Republican Guard, seized their capitol, arrested their leaders, and took control of their government. We won the war. It's over.

What we have now is an occupation of Iraq.

The occupation began when the war ended, and continues to this day. According to our own Pentagon estimates, at least ninety five percent of those attacking our soldiers are Iraqi civilians who view themselves as anti-occupation fighters. And last week both the Defense Minister and the Vice President of Iraq asked us for a specific date on which the occupation would end.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0619-22.htm

[YankeyMCC]

10. Brilliant!

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. I caught part of that on the way home

He was awesome. Almost sounded like NPR in the old days.

[Fovea]

15. Ahh doing it to Luntz is sublime.

I imagine that this bodes ill for Pubbie strategists. When Goliath bit it in front of his buds, you just know the fight went mostly out of them.

And for it to be Luntz that got his ass handed to him is simply delicious. Thanks to Thom for the occupation frame, and Lakoff for the gamesmanship of pinning Iraq's sucking wound and Gore's warning shot across the Climate Change Naysayers.

I was amused to hear ** say how concerned he has been since, what, when he triangulated the Dem platform by claiming he was for CO2 reduction? We all remember how that turned out, don't we?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

16. Can you say flippity-flop? n/t

[drm604]

17. Lakoff is a genius.

Lakoff answered by saying that Democrats must realize "an inconvenient truth" about Iraq-- that when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" he was right. The coalition army defeated Saddam's army and won the war three years ago. That for three years we have been involved in an "occupation." So there is no issue of winning a war, we won that. The issue is when we will end the occupation by bringing the troops home.

This paragraph shows how smart he is. How can the administration respond to something like this? By saying "No, Bush wasn't right"? The only response they have is to get all tangled up in definitions of "war" and "occupation" while trying to defend themselves. While they're doing that we can go on talking about ending the occupation.

This is exactly the type of trap they constantly set for us.

[ClassWarrior]

18. I second that.

NGU.

[mrsadm]

23. Wish I'd heard that debate

sounds really good. One problem, however,

"an inconvenient truth" has too many syllables for most repugs to pronounce.