WASHINGTON — Is it a "surge?" Is it an "escalation?" Is it harmless semantics? Is it disingenuous spin?
One thing is clear: Using the word "surge" to describe President Bush's forthcoming plan for reshaping U.S. efforts in Iraq has ignited a fiery political brouhaha.
The plan, which Bush is scheduled to unveil today, is widely expected to include a proposal for increasing the number of American troops in Iraq. And the increase has been widely referred to by Pentagon officials and others as a "surge."
That's how the furor began, raging over the Internet, in complaints to reporters and in the blogosphere. News organizations across the country have been drawn into the fray, including NPR, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.
What infuriates critics of the war, including many liberal Democrats, is that they see "surge" as a manipulative and deceptive word. It implies a relatively short-term increase in the U.S. military commitment, they say, when the White House intends to keep the additional troops in Iraq much longer, perhaps for several years.
Even worse, critics say, the news media have uncritically accepted the word and thus contributed to deceiving the public.
"I've noticed a complete acceptance on the part of most of the MSM [mainstream media] (and Congress) to accept the White House nomenclature," blogger Nicole Belle wrote in a complaint posted on crooksandliars.com.
"After six years of this, I think we all know that he who frames the debate and chooses the vocabulary wins from the beginning. Let's be sure to not accept the White House framing, no matter how wimped out the MSM is."
Some profess to see Machiavellian intrigue by White House political guru Karl Rove.
"It seems like it comes from Karl Rove ... renaming things, reframing, making it sound acceptable," James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said Tuesday on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show" when a listener called in to complain about the word.
"Please stop buying into the misleading nomenclature calling it a surge," the caller, identified as Mike from Monkton, Md., said. "Misleading the public by misnaming things might be acceptable in politics, though I find it treasonous, but it's time for the Fourth Estate to do its job."
Choosing words to one's advantage is hardly new. Advertising copy writers do it all the time. So do political advocates, as in the struggle over the "estate tax" versus the "death tax."
