Regime change: Where do they get these terms? Do they farm the work out to ad agencies and pollsters? A few months back, the phrase would have been cryptic (petty cash held by governments for incidental expenses, as in chump change?). Who wouldn’t want a regime change? The Ontario government wants one at the school boards. Kids want one from their parents. Fans want a regime change at the local losing team. Now everyone knows it means just one thing: replacing Iraq’s government with one the United States approves. It’s become universal shorthand. It used to be called foreign intervention, gunboat diplomacy, inciting a coup. That’s power, I say: the ability to re-engineer — whoops, there’s another one — the language.

What’s amazing is how such a phrase can be invented and then quarantined to the sole example of attacking Iraq, although it could as readily apply to directly related cases. I’m thinking about the fears expressed by Arab regimes in the region in their opposition to a U.S. attack. They’re practically frantic, but speak in vague, non-specific terms. They talk about creating “instability” and a “dangerous backlash,” or “inflaming” public opinion. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says, “We fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region” and “not a single Arab ruler will be able to curb the popular sentiments” following an attack.

What’s the actual worry: Sad-eyed citizens wandering the streets depressed and bumping into each other? Hardly. These are governments adroit at repression and torture. No, they’re worried about regime change. They’re terrified that an American attack will precipitate popular overthrows of the supine, repressive, pro-American governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, wherever, and their replacement by Islamic fundamentalists à la the Iranian revolution — since no other contenders exist following the failure of secular nationalism in the Arab world.

Then what would the U.S. do — move from country to country, heaping regime change on regime change? Why won’t they use the term? Do they fear superstitiously that, by naming it, it might become real?

Pre-emptive action: This one sounds pretty reasonable at first blush. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney said this week his country should not “rule out a pre-emptive action” against Iraq just because it may not yet have nuclear weapons. I mean, if you knew someone was planning to act against your family, as in Cape Fear, wouldn’t you strike first? Well, not really. You’d probably go to the police, especially if there was any doubt about your information. In the international setting, you don’t have the police to go to (leaving the United Nation’s contentious role aside, for the moment). But just picture the number of countries that can easily feel certain someone else is out to get them.

Think of India and Pakistan. Think of Israel and the Palestinians. Think of the Balkans. Think of Iraq looking over at the U.S. They may be paranoid but they’re not crazy. Take Dick Cheney again. “We are . . . dealing with the same dictator who shoots at American and British pilots in the no-fly zone . . . who dispatched a team of assassins to murder former president Bush . . . who invaded Iran and Kuwait . . . who has been on a . . . list of state sponsors of terrorism.” This is name-calling, some of it accurate, some questionable, and just about every, or at least many, nations could do it just as pungently, simply filling in the blanks.

For this reason, international law, such as it is, has been rigorous about the rare justifications for pre-emptive military strikes, based, surprisingly, on a Canadian precedent. In 1838, British forces seized a ferry, the Caroline, on the U.S. side of the Niagara River that had been used to carry arms and men to an island base of Upper Canadian rebels, and sent it over Niagara Falls in flames. Since then, the reason for pre-emptive military action has had to be an overwhelming and imminent threat, which hardly applies in the Iraq case. If anyone now has a case for preventive action, based on an unmistakable, overwhelming and imminent threat, it would be Saddam Hussein, but I doubt he’s planning to bomb the U.S. first.

Weapons of mass destruction: This one is perplexing. I don’t see the real need for a new term. Whenever they define it, they say nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Is the phrase meant to conceal the fact that the West, including the U.S., has led in the development and use of all those? So you devise a term that applies only to the current set of enemies — the axis of evil et cetera, though Iran has been getting a bye in recent Cheney pronouncements — and which sounds like something new and uniquely malignant. Or is it also meant to avoid the embarrassment that, just this past December, post-September 11, the U.S. refused to sign onto a legally binding international inspection system for the proliferation of biological weapons, based on America’s commercial and military prerogatives?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.