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President Obama has reframed his position on Syria, adjusting the Red Line metaphor: It wasn't his Red Line, not his responsibility for drawing it. It was the Red Line drawn by the world, by the international community--both legally by international treaty, and morally by universal revulsion against the use of poison gas by Assad.
President Obama has reframed his position on Syria, adjusting the Red Line metaphor: It wasn't his Red Line, not his responsibility for drawing it. It was the Red Line drawn by the world, by the international community--both legally by international treaty, and morally by universal revulsion against the use of poison gas by Assad. It was also America's Red Line, imposed by America's commitment to live up to such treaties.
The reframing fit his previous rationale for the Red Line: to uphold international treaties on weapons of mass destruction, both gas and nuclear weapons. By this logic, the Red Line therefore applies not just to Assad's use of sarin, but potentially to Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
The new version of the metaphorical policy has broad consequences, what I have called systemic causation (that goes beyond the immediate local situation) as opposed to direct causation (in this case applying just to the immediate case of Assad's use of sarin).
Some will call the reframing cynical, a way to avoid responsibility for his first use of the Red Line metaphor. But President Obama's reframing makes excellent sense from the perspective of his consistent policy of treaties and international norms, which he has said was the basis for the Red Line metaphor in the first place.
* * *
Metaphors can kill, as I wrote in my original Metaphor and War paper in 1991 on the eve of the Gulf War. Why can metaphors kill? Because metaphors in language are reflections of metaphorical thought that structures reasoning, and thus our actions, both in everyday life and in politics. In politics, they are rarely isolated. They usually come as part of a coherent system of concepts--usually a moral system.
The Red Line metaphor can stand a bit of linguistic analysis. The metaphor is based on a conceptual frame: "Drawing a line in the sand" means that the person who draws the line issues a threat to the person on the other side: you cross the line and I'll hurt you. This frame presupposes another common conceptual metaphor: Performing A Kind of Action Is Being In A Bounded Location, and Changing a Kind of Action is Moving to a New Location.
Examples are "He pushed me into running for office" and "I stopped short of punching him in the nose." The Red Line metaphor says that some actions are characterized as being located on one side of the line, and other actions are seen as being located on the other side. Switching from the first kind of action to the second is seen as crossing the line. The "red" in Red Line can stand either for danger: high alert, or for blood--the harm that will come from crossing the line will be bloody.
The Red Line metaphor is part of a system that includes the Punishment metaphor and the Send-a-Signal metaphor. The Punishment metaphor comes from the application of Strict Father morality to international politics. People commonly construe international politics in terms of family dynamics, based on a World Community as Family metaphor. Within this metaphor, some countries are seen as "heads of the family" while others are construed as children whose behavior must be regulated. One common version of this metaphor is based on the Strict Father family. In a Strict Father family, the father is assumed to know right from wrong, to set rules that are right, and to teach his children to do what is right by punishing them painfully when they do wrong. The punishment must be painful enough so that the child will refrain from acting immorally. The father is morally required to punish. If he doesn't, he shows weakness and the children will start doing what they are not supposed to do because they can get away with it.
Versions of the Punishment metaphor are typically used by conservatives in many domains: No "amnesty" for "illegal aliens" (who crossed the line). Punitive drug laws. Stand your ground laws. And so on.
In President Obama's use of the Punishment metaphor, America is the Strict Father, and bad political actors like Assad are bad children, ready to do bad things at the least sign of weakness in America, the Father who knows right from wrong and is the only one strong enough to enforce the rules -- as John Kerry says, "The Indispensible Nation" in maintaining a moral order in the world.
Why is Obama using the Punishment metaphor as the basis of his policy? The Punishment metaphor is not a mere metaphor. When it is the basis of policy it comes with a form of scenario planning, a literal account of what is expected to happen. Scenarios are conceptual narratives--stories--that have become part of the policy-making process. In the Obama scenario, Assad, when punished, will stop his bad behavior of using poison gas on his citizens.
At this point, the Send-a-Signal metaphor fits. In the Strict Father family, the Father has to warn the children of what will happen if they do wrong. In Obama's use, there is a further conceptual metaphor, the Actions Speak Louder than Words metaphor, in which Acting Is Forceful Communication. This fits the Punishment scenario: the act of punishing Assad will communicate to other bad actors that America will seriously harm them too if they cross the line. In the scenario, the bombing of Assad's military is thus a moral act--preventing the use of gas and other weapons of mass destruction and hence, saving countless lives, not just in Syria but around the world.
Where conservatives tend to think in Strict Father terms, liberals tend to think in terms of a different morally-based family model--the Nurturant Parent model, which two equal parents whose main concern is empathizing with their kinds, being responsible for their safety and fulfillment, openly communicating with them, and expecting them to act that way toward others. Diplomacy in foreign policy is more along the lines of the liberal model, open discussion and reaching agreement without punishment. Obama's instincts are liberal. He has tried diplomacy over and over, to no avail. His goals are nurturant and caring. But he also sees himself as a pragmatic liberal: when nurturance fails, you resort to strictness. You use strict means to a nurturant end.
There are two scenarios for this. Obama is taking the broad systemic causation route pointing to the maintenance of treaties and the deterrence of other bad actors. But liberals like the NY Times' Nick Kristof take the direct, not systemic, route: How can we save lives in Syria now? His argument: Degrading his ordinary weaponry will make it harder for Assad to kill at the rate of 5,000 people a month, and thus can save immediate lives. "...It's plausible that we can deter Syria's generals from deploying [sarin] again if the price is high." This is a version of the rational actor model, with Syria's generals as the rational actors seeking to maximize utility.
But there is no reason to think that Assad and his generals are rational actors. Saddam Hussein was not a rational actor either. He fought to the end. Will Assad? Is he trying to show that he is more masculine than Obama, or is he standing up for the superiority of the Alawite/Shiite version of Islam, of for his family's dominance? Will a limited form of punishment and rational actor considerations bring him to the bargaining table? If the answer is no, then the Obama initiative is likely to fail.
In the Nurturant family, Dad and Mom are equals, diplomatic discussion is the norm, and painful physical punishment is not. Map that onto the Syria situation and you can see why Obama is at odds with traditional liberals, whose Nurturant metaphor for politics tells them to avoid the use of force. With Congress, he is trying diplomacy--the Nurturant means to achieve Punishment, the Strict goal. The result is confusions and strange bedfellows. Conservatives would naturally tend toward punishment. But in a Strict Father family, the father's authority over everyone else must be maintained. Conservative morality, following this principle, leads conservatives to value the authority of conservatism over liberalism, which tends to make them vote against Obama, even when they agree with the content of what he is proposing.
In a true strict father family, the father is the ultimate authority, over not just the kids but also the mother. Dad doesn't have to ask Mom for support when he punishes Junior for disobedience. To those with strict values Obama looks weak both when he tries diplomacy and when he turns to Congress as a statement of democracy. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense who helped take the nation into the Iraq War, stated the position as follows: "...leadership requires that you stand up, take a position, provide clarity and take responsibility..."
In the strict father model, you fight to win, not to help your side gain a limited advantage and then back off. That is the John McCain model. It is not an argument over the details of a limited strike. It is an argument over the goals, but put forth as an argument over details.
The president says the "military action" is "limited." Secretary Kerry says that we don't want war, and he frames the "military action" as "not war"--No boots on the ground. No attempt to take over the country ourselves. But the president can direct further action to prevent poison gas from falling into the wrong hands. The generals respond--call it what you want, it's war. If you're a sailor on a boat shooting missiles at Syria with 13 Russian boats nearby monitoring the missiles you shoot, you will experience it as war.
Korean War vet Rep. Charlie Rangel says, "There is no such thing as a limited war." Those of us with memories that long remember when Vietnam was seen as a limited war, as was Iraq. The metaphor of concern is the Mission Creep metaphor: as the ultimate goal is seen to be harder and harder to achieve, the scope of the war slowly expands, and the Mission creeps bit by bit past its limits. The Mission Creep and Limited War metaphors contradict each other.
The Limited War metaphor depends on another metaphor, the Surgical Strike metaphor: the missiles are so carefully calibrated that they can strike only the projected military targets and no innocent civilians. We were told this in Iraq. It wasn't true. The use of the Surgical Strike metaphor raises hackles among Democrats who remember its use in Iraq.
Part of the Limited War scenario is the Degrading metaphor: our current goal in bombing is to "degrade" Assad's military capacity. It is hard to that to be false, since any lessening of the military capacity, no matter how small, would degrade the military capacity, at least somewhat. Since it is not said how much "degrading" is to count, that means that "success" is assured, at least in the short run.
But what about the long run? What about systemic causation?
It is interesting to hear members of the House and Senate providing most of the arguments against the bombing. Will it just not help? Will it spur a wider war? Will Israel be bombed and gassed? Will Russia enter? Will America be hated and targeted for revenge? Then there is the Slippery Slope metaphor: Once you start bombing, you slowly get pulled into a regional war one step after another.
Metaphor after metaphor. Scenario after scenario. On all sides. To have an opinion is have metaphors and a scenario, that is, a story. Why? Every policy that is proposed is seen by those who propose it as being right -- not wrong or irrelevant. Different policies have different moral views about right and wrong. Since moral systems all make use of conceptual metaphor, there will be metaphors and accompanying scenarios.
One of the most interesting is the Force-of-Shame metaphor: Put the money we would otherwise use on bombing into serious and obvious humanitarian aid for the two million Syrian refugees. Instead of money going for bombs and missiles that may not help and even make matters worse, do some very obvious good. The sight of Americans just doing something unquestionably good for Arabs--mostly followers of Islam--would do unquestionable good, and make America look good in the Arab world. In the metaphorical scenario, this would shame Assad and bring most of the Arab world to the support of the rebels. That's the scenario.
Would it work? From the wide-ranging interviews on al Jazeera America, most of the Arabs and followers of Islam interviewed seem to see the world in fairy-tale terms--with villains, victims and heroes. Many want America to be the hero, defeat the villain Assad, and save the Syrians. Others see America as a villain for wanting to bomb or for standing aside while 100,000 died. But, the refugees, being outside the hero-villain narrative, are outside the fairy tale. The hero defeats the villain and gets a reward. The hero doesn't give humanitarian aid.
We cannot think about a situation as complicated as Syria without conceptual metaphors and scenarios driving policy proposals. In many cases, the conceptual metaphors are unconscious. But with Syria, the policy-defining metaphors are being put into language and are showing up front and center.
In summary, I can't help but think of a great paper by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon called "Why Hawks Win" (2006) about those who planned and carried out the Iraq War. The authors listed examples of all the forms of what they call "System 1 thinking" -- fast, unconscious, effortless, nonrational forms of thought and all too real.
Here is their list as it might apply to Syria:
These are real forms of thought and they occur naturally.
Kahneman proposes that we can avoid the effect of unconscious, fast, nonlogical thought by using slow, conscious, logical System 2 thinking (this is the classical view of conscious rationality). But brain and cognitive science research suggests otherwise. Linear, conscious reasoning makes use of massively parallel unconscious reasoning that makes use of conceptual frames, metaphors, and narratives--and the forms of thought just described above. In the case of Iraq, the policy-makers Kahneman and Renshon correctly cite were conscious, slow-thinking policy-makers using logic and statistics--and in doing so used unconscious System 1 thinking.
No matter how slow or conscious or logically you think about Syria, you will still use metaphors and scenarios of the sort discussed above. They are inevitable in a situation like Syria.
It is vital that we be made aware of all this. Metaphorical and scenario-based thinking is not necessarily false. Conceptual metaphors and scenarios have real inferences that may or may not fit the world. America will act, or act by not acting. There will be real-world consequences in either case. We need to keep track of the metaphors and scenarios that lead to those consequences.
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President Obama has reframed his position on Syria, adjusting the Red Line metaphor: It wasn't his Red Line, not his responsibility for drawing it. It was the Red Line drawn by the world, by the international community--both legally by international treaty, and morally by universal revulsion against the use of poison gas by Assad. It was also America's Red Line, imposed by America's commitment to live up to such treaties.
The reframing fit his previous rationale for the Red Line: to uphold international treaties on weapons of mass destruction, both gas and nuclear weapons. By this logic, the Red Line therefore applies not just to Assad's use of sarin, but potentially to Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
The new version of the metaphorical policy has broad consequences, what I have called systemic causation (that goes beyond the immediate local situation) as opposed to direct causation (in this case applying just to the immediate case of Assad's use of sarin).
Some will call the reframing cynical, a way to avoid responsibility for his first use of the Red Line metaphor. But President Obama's reframing makes excellent sense from the perspective of his consistent policy of treaties and international norms, which he has said was the basis for the Red Line metaphor in the first place.
* * *
Metaphors can kill, as I wrote in my original Metaphor and War paper in 1991 on the eve of the Gulf War. Why can metaphors kill? Because metaphors in language are reflections of metaphorical thought that structures reasoning, and thus our actions, both in everyday life and in politics. In politics, they are rarely isolated. They usually come as part of a coherent system of concepts--usually a moral system.
The Red Line metaphor can stand a bit of linguistic analysis. The metaphor is based on a conceptual frame: "Drawing a line in the sand" means that the person who draws the line issues a threat to the person on the other side: you cross the line and I'll hurt you. This frame presupposes another common conceptual metaphor: Performing A Kind of Action Is Being In A Bounded Location, and Changing a Kind of Action is Moving to a New Location.
Examples are "He pushed me into running for office" and "I stopped short of punching him in the nose." The Red Line metaphor says that some actions are characterized as being located on one side of the line, and other actions are seen as being located on the other side. Switching from the first kind of action to the second is seen as crossing the line. The "red" in Red Line can stand either for danger: high alert, or for blood--the harm that will come from crossing the line will be bloody.
The Red Line metaphor is part of a system that includes the Punishment metaphor and the Send-a-Signal metaphor. The Punishment metaphor comes from the application of Strict Father morality to international politics. People commonly construe international politics in terms of family dynamics, based on a World Community as Family metaphor. Within this metaphor, some countries are seen as "heads of the family" while others are construed as children whose behavior must be regulated. One common version of this metaphor is based on the Strict Father family. In a Strict Father family, the father is assumed to know right from wrong, to set rules that are right, and to teach his children to do what is right by punishing them painfully when they do wrong. The punishment must be painful enough so that the child will refrain from acting immorally. The father is morally required to punish. If he doesn't, he shows weakness and the children will start doing what they are not supposed to do because they can get away with it.
Versions of the Punishment metaphor are typically used by conservatives in many domains: No "amnesty" for "illegal aliens" (who crossed the line). Punitive drug laws. Stand your ground laws. And so on.
In President Obama's use of the Punishment metaphor, America is the Strict Father, and bad political actors like Assad are bad children, ready to do bad things at the least sign of weakness in America, the Father who knows right from wrong and is the only one strong enough to enforce the rules -- as John Kerry says, "The Indispensible Nation" in maintaining a moral order in the world.
Why is Obama using the Punishment metaphor as the basis of his policy? The Punishment metaphor is not a mere metaphor. When it is the basis of policy it comes with a form of scenario planning, a literal account of what is expected to happen. Scenarios are conceptual narratives--stories--that have become part of the policy-making process. In the Obama scenario, Assad, when punished, will stop his bad behavior of using poison gas on his citizens.
At this point, the Send-a-Signal metaphor fits. In the Strict Father family, the Father has to warn the children of what will happen if they do wrong. In Obama's use, there is a further conceptual metaphor, the Actions Speak Louder than Words metaphor, in which Acting Is Forceful Communication. This fits the Punishment scenario: the act of punishing Assad will communicate to other bad actors that America will seriously harm them too if they cross the line. In the scenario, the bombing of Assad's military is thus a moral act--preventing the use of gas and other weapons of mass destruction and hence, saving countless lives, not just in Syria but around the world.
Where conservatives tend to think in Strict Father terms, liberals tend to think in terms of a different morally-based family model--the Nurturant Parent model, which two equal parents whose main concern is empathizing with their kinds, being responsible for their safety and fulfillment, openly communicating with them, and expecting them to act that way toward others. Diplomacy in foreign policy is more along the lines of the liberal model, open discussion and reaching agreement without punishment. Obama's instincts are liberal. He has tried diplomacy over and over, to no avail. His goals are nurturant and caring. But he also sees himself as a pragmatic liberal: when nurturance fails, you resort to strictness. You use strict means to a nurturant end.
There are two scenarios for this. Obama is taking the broad systemic causation route pointing to the maintenance of treaties and the deterrence of other bad actors. But liberals like the NY Times' Nick Kristof take the direct, not systemic, route: How can we save lives in Syria now? His argument: Degrading his ordinary weaponry will make it harder for Assad to kill at the rate of 5,000 people a month, and thus can save immediate lives. "...It's plausible that we can deter Syria's generals from deploying [sarin] again if the price is high." This is a version of the rational actor model, with Syria's generals as the rational actors seeking to maximize utility.
But there is no reason to think that Assad and his generals are rational actors. Saddam Hussein was not a rational actor either. He fought to the end. Will Assad? Is he trying to show that he is more masculine than Obama, or is he standing up for the superiority of the Alawite/Shiite version of Islam, of for his family's dominance? Will a limited form of punishment and rational actor considerations bring him to the bargaining table? If the answer is no, then the Obama initiative is likely to fail.
In the Nurturant family, Dad and Mom are equals, diplomatic discussion is the norm, and painful physical punishment is not. Map that onto the Syria situation and you can see why Obama is at odds with traditional liberals, whose Nurturant metaphor for politics tells them to avoid the use of force. With Congress, he is trying diplomacy--the Nurturant means to achieve Punishment, the Strict goal. The result is confusions and strange bedfellows. Conservatives would naturally tend toward punishment. But in a Strict Father family, the father's authority over everyone else must be maintained. Conservative morality, following this principle, leads conservatives to value the authority of conservatism over liberalism, which tends to make them vote against Obama, even when they agree with the content of what he is proposing.
In a true strict father family, the father is the ultimate authority, over not just the kids but also the mother. Dad doesn't have to ask Mom for support when he punishes Junior for disobedience. To those with strict values Obama looks weak both when he tries diplomacy and when he turns to Congress as a statement of democracy. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense who helped take the nation into the Iraq War, stated the position as follows: "...leadership requires that you stand up, take a position, provide clarity and take responsibility..."
In the strict father model, you fight to win, not to help your side gain a limited advantage and then back off. That is the John McCain model. It is not an argument over the details of a limited strike. It is an argument over the goals, but put forth as an argument over details.
The president says the "military action" is "limited." Secretary Kerry says that we don't want war, and he frames the "military action" as "not war"--No boots on the ground. No attempt to take over the country ourselves. But the president can direct further action to prevent poison gas from falling into the wrong hands. The generals respond--call it what you want, it's war. If you're a sailor on a boat shooting missiles at Syria with 13 Russian boats nearby monitoring the missiles you shoot, you will experience it as war.
Korean War vet Rep. Charlie Rangel says, "There is no such thing as a limited war." Those of us with memories that long remember when Vietnam was seen as a limited war, as was Iraq. The metaphor of concern is the Mission Creep metaphor: as the ultimate goal is seen to be harder and harder to achieve, the scope of the war slowly expands, and the Mission creeps bit by bit past its limits. The Mission Creep and Limited War metaphors contradict each other.
The Limited War metaphor depends on another metaphor, the Surgical Strike metaphor: the missiles are so carefully calibrated that they can strike only the projected military targets and no innocent civilians. We were told this in Iraq. It wasn't true. The use of the Surgical Strike metaphor raises hackles among Democrats who remember its use in Iraq.
Part of the Limited War scenario is the Degrading metaphor: our current goal in bombing is to "degrade" Assad's military capacity. It is hard to that to be false, since any lessening of the military capacity, no matter how small, would degrade the military capacity, at least somewhat. Since it is not said how much "degrading" is to count, that means that "success" is assured, at least in the short run.
But what about the long run? What about systemic causation?
It is interesting to hear members of the House and Senate providing most of the arguments against the bombing. Will it just not help? Will it spur a wider war? Will Israel be bombed and gassed? Will Russia enter? Will America be hated and targeted for revenge? Then there is the Slippery Slope metaphor: Once you start bombing, you slowly get pulled into a regional war one step after another.
Metaphor after metaphor. Scenario after scenario. On all sides. To have an opinion is have metaphors and a scenario, that is, a story. Why? Every policy that is proposed is seen by those who propose it as being right -- not wrong or irrelevant. Different policies have different moral views about right and wrong. Since moral systems all make use of conceptual metaphor, there will be metaphors and accompanying scenarios.
One of the most interesting is the Force-of-Shame metaphor: Put the money we would otherwise use on bombing into serious and obvious humanitarian aid for the two million Syrian refugees. Instead of money going for bombs and missiles that may not help and even make matters worse, do some very obvious good. The sight of Americans just doing something unquestionably good for Arabs--mostly followers of Islam--would do unquestionable good, and make America look good in the Arab world. In the metaphorical scenario, this would shame Assad and bring most of the Arab world to the support of the rebels. That's the scenario.
Would it work? From the wide-ranging interviews on al Jazeera America, most of the Arabs and followers of Islam interviewed seem to see the world in fairy-tale terms--with villains, victims and heroes. Many want America to be the hero, defeat the villain Assad, and save the Syrians. Others see America as a villain for wanting to bomb or for standing aside while 100,000 died. But, the refugees, being outside the hero-villain narrative, are outside the fairy tale. The hero defeats the villain and gets a reward. The hero doesn't give humanitarian aid.
We cannot think about a situation as complicated as Syria without conceptual metaphors and scenarios driving policy proposals. In many cases, the conceptual metaphors are unconscious. But with Syria, the policy-defining metaphors are being put into language and are showing up front and center.
In summary, I can't help but think of a great paper by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon called "Why Hawks Win" (2006) about those who planned and carried out the Iraq War. The authors listed examples of all the forms of what they call "System 1 thinking" -- fast, unconscious, effortless, nonrational forms of thought and all too real.
Here is their list as it might apply to Syria:
These are real forms of thought and they occur naturally.
Kahneman proposes that we can avoid the effect of unconscious, fast, nonlogical thought by using slow, conscious, logical System 2 thinking (this is the classical view of conscious rationality). But brain and cognitive science research suggests otherwise. Linear, conscious reasoning makes use of massively parallel unconscious reasoning that makes use of conceptual frames, metaphors, and narratives--and the forms of thought just described above. In the case of Iraq, the policy-makers Kahneman and Renshon correctly cite were conscious, slow-thinking policy-makers using logic and statistics--and in doing so used unconscious System 1 thinking.
No matter how slow or conscious or logically you think about Syria, you will still use metaphors and scenarios of the sort discussed above. They are inevitable in a situation like Syria.
It is vital that we be made aware of all this. Metaphorical and scenario-based thinking is not necessarily false. Conceptual metaphors and scenarios have real inferences that may or may not fit the world. America will act, or act by not acting. There will be real-world consequences in either case. We need to keep track of the metaphors and scenarios that lead to those consequences.
President Obama has reframed his position on Syria, adjusting the Red Line metaphor: It wasn't his Red Line, not his responsibility for drawing it. It was the Red Line drawn by the world, by the international community--both legally by international treaty, and morally by universal revulsion against the use of poison gas by Assad. It was also America's Red Line, imposed by America's commitment to live up to such treaties.
The reframing fit his previous rationale for the Red Line: to uphold international treaties on weapons of mass destruction, both gas and nuclear weapons. By this logic, the Red Line therefore applies not just to Assad's use of sarin, but potentially to Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
The new version of the metaphorical policy has broad consequences, what I have called systemic causation (that goes beyond the immediate local situation) as opposed to direct causation (in this case applying just to the immediate case of Assad's use of sarin).
Some will call the reframing cynical, a way to avoid responsibility for his first use of the Red Line metaphor. But President Obama's reframing makes excellent sense from the perspective of his consistent policy of treaties and international norms, which he has said was the basis for the Red Line metaphor in the first place.
* * *
Metaphors can kill, as I wrote in my original Metaphor and War paper in 1991 on the eve of the Gulf War. Why can metaphors kill? Because metaphors in language are reflections of metaphorical thought that structures reasoning, and thus our actions, both in everyday life and in politics. In politics, they are rarely isolated. They usually come as part of a coherent system of concepts--usually a moral system.
The Red Line metaphor can stand a bit of linguistic analysis. The metaphor is based on a conceptual frame: "Drawing a line in the sand" means that the person who draws the line issues a threat to the person on the other side: you cross the line and I'll hurt you. This frame presupposes another common conceptual metaphor: Performing A Kind of Action Is Being In A Bounded Location, and Changing a Kind of Action is Moving to a New Location.
Examples are "He pushed me into running for office" and "I stopped short of punching him in the nose." The Red Line metaphor says that some actions are characterized as being located on one side of the line, and other actions are seen as being located on the other side. Switching from the first kind of action to the second is seen as crossing the line. The "red" in Red Line can stand either for danger: high alert, or for blood--the harm that will come from crossing the line will be bloody.
The Red Line metaphor is part of a system that includes the Punishment metaphor and the Send-a-Signal metaphor. The Punishment metaphor comes from the application of Strict Father morality to international politics. People commonly construe international politics in terms of family dynamics, based on a World Community as Family metaphor. Within this metaphor, some countries are seen as "heads of the family" while others are construed as children whose behavior must be regulated. One common version of this metaphor is based on the Strict Father family. In a Strict Father family, the father is assumed to know right from wrong, to set rules that are right, and to teach his children to do what is right by punishing them painfully when they do wrong. The punishment must be painful enough so that the child will refrain from acting immorally. The father is morally required to punish. If he doesn't, he shows weakness and the children will start doing what they are not supposed to do because they can get away with it.
Versions of the Punishment metaphor are typically used by conservatives in many domains: No "amnesty" for "illegal aliens" (who crossed the line). Punitive drug laws. Stand your ground laws. And so on.
In President Obama's use of the Punishment metaphor, America is the Strict Father, and bad political actors like Assad are bad children, ready to do bad things at the least sign of weakness in America, the Father who knows right from wrong and is the only one strong enough to enforce the rules -- as John Kerry says, "The Indispensible Nation" in maintaining a moral order in the world.
Why is Obama using the Punishment metaphor as the basis of his policy? The Punishment metaphor is not a mere metaphor. When it is the basis of policy it comes with a form of scenario planning, a literal account of what is expected to happen. Scenarios are conceptual narratives--stories--that have become part of the policy-making process. In the Obama scenario, Assad, when punished, will stop his bad behavior of using poison gas on his citizens.
At this point, the Send-a-Signal metaphor fits. In the Strict Father family, the Father has to warn the children of what will happen if they do wrong. In Obama's use, there is a further conceptual metaphor, the Actions Speak Louder than Words metaphor, in which Acting Is Forceful Communication. This fits the Punishment scenario: the act of punishing Assad will communicate to other bad actors that America will seriously harm them too if they cross the line. In the scenario, the bombing of Assad's military is thus a moral act--preventing the use of gas and other weapons of mass destruction and hence, saving countless lives, not just in Syria but around the world.
Where conservatives tend to think in Strict Father terms, liberals tend to think in terms of a different morally-based family model--the Nurturant Parent model, which two equal parents whose main concern is empathizing with their kinds, being responsible for their safety and fulfillment, openly communicating with them, and expecting them to act that way toward others. Diplomacy in foreign policy is more along the lines of the liberal model, open discussion and reaching agreement without punishment. Obama's instincts are liberal. He has tried diplomacy over and over, to no avail. His goals are nurturant and caring. But he also sees himself as a pragmatic liberal: when nurturance fails, you resort to strictness. You use strict means to a nurturant end.
There are two scenarios for this. Obama is taking the broad systemic causation route pointing to the maintenance of treaties and the deterrence of other bad actors. But liberals like the NY Times' Nick Kristof take the direct, not systemic, route: How can we save lives in Syria now? His argument: Degrading his ordinary weaponry will make it harder for Assad to kill at the rate of 5,000 people a month, and thus can save immediate lives. "...It's plausible that we can deter Syria's generals from deploying [sarin] again if the price is high." This is a version of the rational actor model, with Syria's generals as the rational actors seeking to maximize utility.
But there is no reason to think that Assad and his generals are rational actors. Saddam Hussein was not a rational actor either. He fought to the end. Will Assad? Is he trying to show that he is more masculine than Obama, or is he standing up for the superiority of the Alawite/Shiite version of Islam, of for his family's dominance? Will a limited form of punishment and rational actor considerations bring him to the bargaining table? If the answer is no, then the Obama initiative is likely to fail.
In the Nurturant family, Dad and Mom are equals, diplomatic discussion is the norm, and painful physical punishment is not. Map that onto the Syria situation and you can see why Obama is at odds with traditional liberals, whose Nurturant metaphor for politics tells them to avoid the use of force. With Congress, he is trying diplomacy--the Nurturant means to achieve Punishment, the Strict goal. The result is confusions and strange bedfellows. Conservatives would naturally tend toward punishment. But in a Strict Father family, the father's authority over everyone else must be maintained. Conservative morality, following this principle, leads conservatives to value the authority of conservatism over liberalism, which tends to make them vote against Obama, even when they agree with the content of what he is proposing.
In a true strict father family, the father is the ultimate authority, over not just the kids but also the mother. Dad doesn't have to ask Mom for support when he punishes Junior for disobedience. To those with strict values Obama looks weak both when he tries diplomacy and when he turns to Congress as a statement of democracy. Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense who helped take the nation into the Iraq War, stated the position as follows: "...leadership requires that you stand up, take a position, provide clarity and take responsibility..."
In the strict father model, you fight to win, not to help your side gain a limited advantage and then back off. That is the John McCain model. It is not an argument over the details of a limited strike. It is an argument over the goals, but put forth as an argument over details.
The president says the "military action" is "limited." Secretary Kerry says that we don't want war, and he frames the "military action" as "not war"--No boots on the ground. No attempt to take over the country ourselves. But the president can direct further action to prevent poison gas from falling into the wrong hands. The generals respond--call it what you want, it's war. If you're a sailor on a boat shooting missiles at Syria with 13 Russian boats nearby monitoring the missiles you shoot, you will experience it as war.
Korean War vet Rep. Charlie Rangel says, "There is no such thing as a limited war." Those of us with memories that long remember when Vietnam was seen as a limited war, as was Iraq. The metaphor of concern is the Mission Creep metaphor: as the ultimate goal is seen to be harder and harder to achieve, the scope of the war slowly expands, and the Mission creeps bit by bit past its limits. The Mission Creep and Limited War metaphors contradict each other.
The Limited War metaphor depends on another metaphor, the Surgical Strike metaphor: the missiles are so carefully calibrated that they can strike only the projected military targets and no innocent civilians. We were told this in Iraq. It wasn't true. The use of the Surgical Strike metaphor raises hackles among Democrats who remember its use in Iraq.
Part of the Limited War scenario is the Degrading metaphor: our current goal in bombing is to "degrade" Assad's military capacity. It is hard to that to be false, since any lessening of the military capacity, no matter how small, would degrade the military capacity, at least somewhat. Since it is not said how much "degrading" is to count, that means that "success" is assured, at least in the short run.
But what about the long run? What about systemic causation?
It is interesting to hear members of the House and Senate providing most of the arguments against the bombing. Will it just not help? Will it spur a wider war? Will Israel be bombed and gassed? Will Russia enter? Will America be hated and targeted for revenge? Then there is the Slippery Slope metaphor: Once you start bombing, you slowly get pulled into a regional war one step after another.
Metaphor after metaphor. Scenario after scenario. On all sides. To have an opinion is have metaphors and a scenario, that is, a story. Why? Every policy that is proposed is seen by those who propose it as being right -- not wrong or irrelevant. Different policies have different moral views about right and wrong. Since moral systems all make use of conceptual metaphor, there will be metaphors and accompanying scenarios.
One of the most interesting is the Force-of-Shame metaphor: Put the money we would otherwise use on bombing into serious and obvious humanitarian aid for the two million Syrian refugees. Instead of money going for bombs and missiles that may not help and even make matters worse, do some very obvious good. The sight of Americans just doing something unquestionably good for Arabs--mostly followers of Islam--would do unquestionable good, and make America look good in the Arab world. In the metaphorical scenario, this would shame Assad and bring most of the Arab world to the support of the rebels. That's the scenario.
Would it work? From the wide-ranging interviews on al Jazeera America, most of the Arabs and followers of Islam interviewed seem to see the world in fairy-tale terms--with villains, victims and heroes. Many want America to be the hero, defeat the villain Assad, and save the Syrians. Others see America as a villain for wanting to bomb or for standing aside while 100,000 died. But, the refugees, being outside the hero-villain narrative, are outside the fairy tale. The hero defeats the villain and gets a reward. The hero doesn't give humanitarian aid.
We cannot think about a situation as complicated as Syria without conceptual metaphors and scenarios driving policy proposals. In many cases, the conceptual metaphors are unconscious. But with Syria, the policy-defining metaphors are being put into language and are showing up front and center.
In summary, I can't help but think of a great paper by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon called "Why Hawks Win" (2006) about those who planned and carried out the Iraq War. The authors listed examples of all the forms of what they call "System 1 thinking" -- fast, unconscious, effortless, nonrational forms of thought and all too real.
Here is their list as it might apply to Syria:
These are real forms of thought and they occur naturally.
Kahneman proposes that we can avoid the effect of unconscious, fast, nonlogical thought by using slow, conscious, logical System 2 thinking (this is the classical view of conscious rationality). But brain and cognitive science research suggests otherwise. Linear, conscious reasoning makes use of massively parallel unconscious reasoning that makes use of conceptual frames, metaphors, and narratives--and the forms of thought just described above. In the case of Iraq, the policy-makers Kahneman and Renshon correctly cite were conscious, slow-thinking policy-makers using logic and statistics--and in doing so used unconscious System 1 thinking.
No matter how slow or conscious or logically you think about Syria, you will still use metaphors and scenarios of the sort discussed above. They are inevitable in a situation like Syria.
It is vital that we be made aware of all this. Metaphorical and scenario-based thinking is not necessarily false. Conceptual metaphors and scenarios have real inferences that may or may not fit the world. America will act, or act by not acting. There will be real-world consequences in either case. We need to keep track of the metaphors and scenarios that lead to those consequences.
The president signaled an end to birthright citizenship and a prompt start to deportation raids as migrants at the southern border were barred from entering the U.S.
President Donald Trump had barely finished his inauguration speech Monday when his anti-immigration agenda's human impact became clear, with families at the U.S.-Mexico border learning their existing appointments with Customs and Border Protection had been cancelled after waiting months to speak with officials about applying for asylum.
Arelis R. Hernández of The Washington Post was among the journalists who shared the stories of devastated migrants on Monday, posting a video of one person who had been determined to enter the U.S. through a port of entry.
"Existing appointments are no longer valid," read a message on the CBP One app that was launched by the Biden administration, following Trump's inauguration speech in which he detailed several anti-immigration executive orders that he planned to sign immediately.
The app was rendered inoperable after Trump pledged to declare a "national emergency at the southern border" and said that "all illegal entry will immediately be halted," with administration officials beginning "the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came"—a reference to Trump's mass deportation plan that was a signature theme of his election campaign.
Ahead of Trump's inauguration, Pope Francis was among the faith leaders who condemned his anti-immigration agenda, saying he was praying that under the second Trump administration, Americans "will prosper and always strive to build a more just society, where there is no room for hatred, discrimination, or exclusion."
If Trump moves forward with his mass deportation plan, said the pope, "this will be a disgrace."
"That's not how things are resolved," said Pope Francis.
Trump's "border czar," Thomas Homan, who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), attempted to backtrack on Saturday regarding details of an administration plan to launch immigration raids across Chicago just after Inauguration Day.
"ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one," Homan told the Post. "This is nationwide thing. We're not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan."
But other incoming Trump officials, including Homan, have previously said that any of the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are in the United States could be targeted as the administration begins enforcement immediately.
Homan said in December that—contrary to the hope expressed by Pope Francis ahead of the inaugural speech—the administration is planning to "set up a phone line for members of the public to alert immigration authorities to undocumented people in their communities."
Chris Thomas, an attorney with the law firm Holland & Hart, who has represented people and businesses swept up in immigration raids, told Forbes that the Trump administration is likely to target workplaces without providing any notice to business owners as a way of generating publicity.
"When the government encourages [informing authorities about undocumented people], we've seen people turning in ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, business competitors, and neighbors they don't like," Thomas told Forbes.
Trump said Monday that he plans to promptly end birthright citizenship via executive order, reinterpreting the 14th Amendment and excluding from its protections U.S.-born babies whose parents were born outside the country. Legal scholars have signaled such a move would be challenged in court.
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant rights group America's Voice, noted that Trump's "radical plan for mass deportations is not what the American people want, especially when they learn the details and see it unfold," citing polls from CNN and Fox News.
"Scores of business leaders in key industries are fearful that mass deportation will gut entire sectors of our economy and public schools are taking the dramatic step of preparing their classrooms and parking lots for raids by federal agents," said Cárdenas. "Much like we saw during his family separation policy, we expect backlash from Americans upon witnessing the harms of Trump's second-term immigration agenda, including on the American economy and our core values."
Ronnate Asirwatham, director of government relations for NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, said Trump's speech indicated that "in the coming days we will see an onslaught of executive orders, proclamations, and legislation that will attempt to criminalize our neighbors, family members, and friends."
"We will not let our community be divided in this way," said Asirwatham. "From doctors to grocery store workers, if our neighbors are ripped from our communities, we will be grieving their loss, absence, gifts, and contributions to our community and country. We refuse to stay silent as the state unnecessarily targets people, all the while pursuing policies that benefit only the ultrawealthy."
Joan F. Neal, interm executive director of NETWORK, said the group will "shed light on these heinous policies and hold our government accountable, with a vision of an inclusive, pluralistic democracy that welcomes those fleeing persecution, keeps families together, and supports an economy for all so that we can build a more just future."
"We will not remain silent," said Neal, "while our neighbors are harmed by cruel and vicious treatment."
"The victory of freeing Leonard Peltier is a symbol of our collective strength—and our resistance will never stop," vowed one Indigenous organizer.
Just minutes before leaving office, Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life prison sentence of Leonard Peltier, the elderly American Indian Movement activist who supporters say was framed for the murder of two federal agents during a 1975 reservation shootout.
"It's finally over, I'm going home," Peltier, who is 80 years old, said in a statement released by the Indigenous-led activist group NDN Collective. "I want to show the world I'm a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me."
While not the full pardon for which he and his defenders have long fought, the outgoing Democratic president's commutation will allow Peltier—who has been imprisoned for nearly a half-century—to "spend his remaining days in home confinement," according to Biden's statement, which was no longer posted on the White House website after Republican President Donald Trump took office Monday afternoon.
🚨BREAKING🚨 Leonard Peltier Granted Executive Clemency After 50 years of unjust incarceration and the tireless efforts of intergenerational grassroots organizing and advocacy, our elder and relative Leonard Peltier has been granted executive clemency.
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— NDN Collective ( @ndncollective.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 9:02 AM
"Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier's prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison," Biden explained.
Biden Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in U.S. history, said in a statement: "I am beyond words about the commutation of Leonard Peltier. His release from prison signifies a measure of justice that has long evaded so many Native Americans for so many decades. I am grateful that Leonard can now go home to his family. I applaud President Biden for this action and understanding what this means to Indian Country."
Congressman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who last month led 34 U.S. lawmakers in a letter urging clemency for Peltier, said in a statement that "for too long, Mr. Peltier has been denied both justice and the pursuit of a full, healthy life at the hands of the U.S. government, but today, he is finally able to go home."
"President Biden's decision is not just the right, merciful, and decent one—it is a testament to Mr. Peltier's resilience and the unwavering support of the countless global leaders, Indigenous voices, civil rights and legal experts, and so many others who have advocated so tirelessly for his release," Grijalva added. "While there is still much work to be done to fix the system that allowed this wrong and so many others against Indian Country, especially as we face the coming years, let us today celebrate Mr. Peltier's return home."
NDN Collective founder and CEO Nick Tilsen said Monday that "Leonard Peltier's freedom today is the result of 50 years of intergenerational resistance, organizing, and advocacy."
"Leonard Peltier's liberation is our liberation—we will honor him by bringing him back to his homelands to live out the rest of his days surrounded by loved ones, healing, and reconnecting with his land and culture," Tilsen continued.
"Let Leonard's freedom be a reminder that the entire so-called United States is built on the stolen lands of Indigenous people—and that Indigenous people have successfully resisted every attempt to oppress, silence, and colonize us," Tilsen added. "The victory of freeing Leonard Peltier is a symbol of our collective strength—and our resistance will never stop."
Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O'Brien said that "President Biden was right to commute the life sentence of Indigenous elder and activist Leonard Peltier given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial."
While Peltier admits to having participated in the June 26, 1975 gunfight at the Oglala Sioux Reservation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, he denies killing Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams.
As HuffPost senior political reporter Jennifer Bendery recapped Monday:
There was never evidence that Peltier committed a crime, and the U.S. government never did figure out who shot those agents. But federal officials needed someone to take the fall. The FBI had just lost two agents, and Peltier's co-defendants were all acquitted based on self-defense. So, Peltier became their guy.
His trial was rife with misconduct. The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated Peltier. A juror acknowledged on the second day of the trial that she had "prejudice against Indians," but she was kept on anyway.
The government's case fell apart after these revelations, so it simply revised its charges against Peltier to "aiding and abetting" whoever did kill the agents—based entirely on the fact that he was one of dozens of people present when the shootout took place. Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Joe Stuntz Killsright was also killed at Pine Ridge when a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs agent sniper shot him in the head after Coler and Williams were killed. Stuntz' death has never been investigated.
Some Indigenous activists welcomed Peltier's commutation while also remembering Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, an Mi'kmaq activist who was kidnapped and murdered at Pine Ridge in December 1975 by her fellow AIM members. Some of Aquash's defenders believe her killing to be an assassination ordered by AIM leaders who feared she was an FBI informant.
Before leaving office, Biden issued a flurry of eleventh-hour preemptive pardons meant to protect numerous relatives and government officials whom Trump and his allies have threatened with politically motivated legal action.
However, the outgoing president dashed the hopes of figures including Steven Donziger, Charles Littlejohn, and descendants of Ethel Rosenberg, who were
seeking last-minute pardons or commutations.
"Today marks the beginning of an administration dominated by billionaires and corporate interests."
Donald Trump was sworn in Monday as the 47th president of the United States with some of the richest people on the planet standing close behind him on the inaugural platform—a symbol of what observers described as the nation's slide toward oligarchy.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were granted "prime seats" at the event, positioned in front of many lawmakers and Trump Cabinet nominees. Amazon, Google, and Meta each donated $1 million to the president's inaugural fund, and Musk—the world's richest man—spent over $250 million backing the billionaire president's bid for a second White House term.
Tim Cook, Apple's billionaire CEO and a donor to the inauguration, was also in attendance at Monday's event, which was financed by Wall Street banks, tech giants, the pharmaceutical lobby, fossil fuel companies, crypto firms, and other corporate interests.
"Donald Trump's inauguration today is a coronation of our country's descent into oligarchy: billionaires and corporations spending hundreds of millions of dollars lining the pockets of another billionaire—now president—to usher in a presidency governed for and by the wealthy elite," Justice Democrats, a group that works to elect progressives to Congress, wrote in an email to supporters after Trump was sworn in.
"They're buying influence," the group continued. "And they can expect a massive return on their investment. Crypto is already seeing one with Trump promising an executive order handout to the Wall Street-backed Big Tech corporations on Day 1. Banks and developers are already winning out as Trump and Republicans put conditions on aid to desperate Americans who have lost their homes and need immediate disaster relief in California. This administration will be a boon for the already wealthy few and will be crushing to everyday people struggling to get by."
Nabil Ahmed, economic and racial justice director at Oxfam America, described a photo of Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, and Musk standing together on the inaugural platform as "a defining photo for the new Gilded Age."
Trump's inauguration, Ahmed added, "makes clearer than ever the triumph of oligarchy—one that isn't incidental but intrinsic to the politics and policies that we're seeing set out."
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cheers as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks after being sworn in on January 20, 2025. (Photo: Saul Loeb/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump's second administration, which could be staffed by at least 13 billionaires, is expected to bring a fresh push for large-scale deregulation and another round of tax cuts for the rich and large corporations—a giveaway that's expected to be funded in part by cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other key programs.
"Today marks the beginning of an administration dominated by billionaires and corporate interests," Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) executive director David Kass said in a statement. "Unsurprisingly, a billionaire president and his top adviser—the wealthiest person on earth—will prioritize passing $5 trillion in new tax cuts benefiting themselves and their wealthy allies, all at the expense of everyday Americans."
"Let's be clear: The next four years will be a tremendous challenge," said Kass. "We are committed to fighting back against a second Trump Tax Scam because the first one helped to double billionaire wealth and exploded the deficit. ATF and its coalition members will stand on the front lines pushing back against these deeply harmful measures and fighting for a tax code and economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few."
Trump's return to the White House comes days after former President Joe Biden, in his farewell address to the nation, belatedly warned of the threat posed by "an oligarchy... of extreme wealth, power, and influence."
According to an Oxfam report released Monday, the world's billionaires saw their wealth surge by $2 trillion last year as progress against global poverty remained stagnant. The United States has more billionaires than any other country, and its campaign finance laws allow the ultra-wealthy to pump unlimited sums into elections.
"With the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the installation of his team of billionaires, we must prepare for an administration that's set to pour fuel on already extraordinary inequality," Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said Monday. "Our country and the world today are extremely unequal; for too long, big corporations and an ultra-wealthy few have rigged the system in their own favor, at the expense of ordinary families."
"The Trump-Musk inequality agenda is not the only threat we are facing around the world, as leaders seek to divide us and conflict and climate change increase the number, severity, and duration of humanitarian crises," Maxman added. "But together, we can and must continue our fight against inequality here in the United States and globally."