Dialogue: There's a word war on and the President's brain is AWOL

By JOE BENNETT

It's good to mock a President. It's good for the President himself because it stops him thinking too well of himself. It's also good for the mockers.

None of us is fond of having people over us, and to laugh at their expense gives us a feeling of autonomy.

Wise kings have always kept a fool. The fool has licence to say what he likes so long as it's true. King Lear's fool told the truth so insistently he drove his master mad.

George W. Bush keeps no fool, but plenty of people have assumed the role uninvited. The 43rd President of the United States has suffered much mockery. The internet is crammed with his verbal blunders. Nothing Bush can do can stop us reading that, according to the President, more and more of America's imports are coming from overseas.

It is good that we can laugh at Bush without fear of reprisal. Freedom of speech is fundamental to what we call democracy and it is comforting to feel superior to our superiors. But not in a time of danger.

Right now it is discomforting to know that the man nominally in charge of the destiny of the Western world is not in charge of his words.

For better or worse, we judge our leaders by their words. I was 8 when Churchill died. I can just remember being bored by his funeral. I can't tell you a single thing that Churchill did but I could quote you half a dozen things he said, phrases that lodged in the consciousness of a generation.

They used the tone of epic drama, but the language of the everyday. They stirred the pride and courage of a people.

We won't get the same from Bush, though it must be said that his task is harder. The English language has no word to describe the maniacs who flew their stolen planes into the World Trade Center.

We call them terrorists but it is not enough. It doesn't capture the enormity of their acts, acts that widened the eyes, momentarily stopped everyone's breathing and then reordered the brain.

But Bush found a word. Within hours of the horror he had appeared on television and called them "folks".

The bathos of it was stunning. His minders whisked him off and sticky-taped his lips. But before they could do so Bush had used the word "war". It was the wrong word. I can't think of a right word but war was wrong.

War requires an identified enemy, but those who had done the deed were dead. Those who stood behind it were shadowy at best and probably unknown.

Since then, words are all we've been fed - something for which we should be grateful. As far as we know, the only bullets fired have been verbal.

All wars are fought at first with propaganda, and every line that Bush has spoken has been scripted to win us over.

He named the operation Infinite Justice, then withdrew the title because it was supposed to have offended Islam. It became Enduring Freedom.

Both have been called code names. They are not code names. Codes are secret. These names are public. And each could be the title of a horrible Hollywood film.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's oiled biceps would play the lead and the gulf between good and evil would be as emphatic as the Grand Canyon.

Not for one second do I deny the evil of what happened in New York, but words have made it seem simpler than it is.

Because the President called it war, and because the act of mass murder that began it seemed like war, the propaganda had to isolate an enemy. The White House duly nominated a country and a regime, and circled it with words and troops.

They appointed a bogeyman-in-chief, Osama bin Laden. He is painted like one of Batman's constant foes, the Riddler or the Joker, intent on world domination. How true this is none of us know.

Bush has also resorted to the imagery of the wild west, a simple world where once again the good and the bad were starkly defined. He wants bin Laden dead or alive.

He can run, the President has said, and he thinks he can hide, but we know better. Well, I'm not sure that we do. Bin Laden's been hiding without apparently running for years. Clinton lobbed missiles at him in 1998 and seemingly missed by miles.

Words are dangerous. It is words, more often than not, that pull the triggers that kill the people. We would be safer if the man in charge of all our destinies had better charge of words.