El lenguaje y la guerra. Subordinación de los medios al discurso político ante el ataque sobre Irak

Abstract

The language used to legitimize the war against Iraq (2003) as a consequence of the scenario created in the aftermath of September 11 reveals the application of mechanisms of classic "psychological" or "political" warfare, typical of the cold war period, except that now the role of enemy corresponds to the Islamic world. This phenomenon also reveals a trend in which the function of the media is increasingly deteriorating, given that they seem to have renounced protecting the stability of the democratic system and have, in fact, contributed to blurring the problems arising from the terrorist attacks of September 11. Strategies to control and dominate global information on the part of the most powerful western governments should not surprise us, but the lack of independence and critical perspective of the media with respect to this phenomenon confirms the success of the establishment in disarming, over the past few years, the media's editorial staffs. The result is a manipulated, governmental discourse in which the United States' message concerning the war in Iraq has been easily imposed, a journalistic language impregnated with binary Manichean formulas regarding good and evil, simplifications of increasingly demonized Islamic cultural references, or, in the face of the drama of war, narcotization through the use of objectivistic terms.