Politicians and the English language

Hungry and tired after a hard week's work, the animals ask for apples and milk, but Squealer says that they can't have any, because the pigs now need all the apples and milk. At another point in George Orwell's Animal Farm, Squealer — "a brilliant talker" who could "turn black into white" — describes a dramatic reduction in food rations for all the animals, except the pigs and dogs, as a "readjustment".

"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder sound respectable," wrote Orwell in his great essay, "Politics and the English Language", which I reread every year at around this time. Although it was published in 1946, "Politics and the English Language" is as relevant today as it was then, because politicians still like to obscure rather than explain. This, Orwell said, "is needed if one wants to name things without calling up pictures of them." So, while George W. Bush's "Global War on Terror" called up pictures of bombs, terror and death, President Obama's substitution — the "Overseas Contingency Operation" — does exactly the opposite. With just three words, the terrorists are no longer terrorizing and US drones aren't still killing them in Pakistan. Except that they are, of course.

Meanwhile, under the headline "A Deadly Month for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan", The New York Times recently reported that July was "the deadliest month for American service members in the country since the 2001 invasion." But all those anti-war protestors who were on the streets during that war in Iraq seem to have moved on. There are no anti-war protests in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, either. That's because the Ministry of Truth slogan is... "War is Peace".