State's Recall of "DIRT" (Dictionary of International Relations Terms)
Author: Jim Guirard -- TrueSpeak Institute
Source: The Washington Times -- May 11, 1987
For a long list of very good reasons, an embarrassed US State Department has suddenly withdrawn from circulation its new edition of Dictionary of International Relations Terms -- "DIRT" for short.
The announced reasons for the urgent recall of this 113-page publication is a definition of the term "Contras" which sounds like it might have been written in Moscow or Havana. The dictionary describes these alleged Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries -- President Reagan calls them "freedom fighters" -- as "former members of the Somozist National Guard, dissident right-wing former Sandinistas, and the Miskito Indian Minority."
The fact that the "former...National Guard" element in the armies of Nicaragua's New Revolution is less than two percent (2%), and falling, seems to have escaped the attention of the State Department's eagle-eyed definers of truth.
Just as astonishing is their concoction of the term "dissident right-wing former Sandinistas" -- which clearly suggests that any Nicaraguan who is anti-Communist must, by definition, be "right-wing." (An entire battalion of Soviet and Cuban propagandists could have done no better.)
Never mind that this "former Sandinista" contingent of the revolutionary Contras is characterized by the support of such prominent liberals and centrists as Arturo Cruz, Violetta Chamarro, Lucia de Salazar, Pedro Joachim Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo.
And never mind that it includes thousands of lesser-known Nicaraguan democrats who revolted against Anastasio Somoza but who then saw their newfound democracy stolen from them by a Stalinist -- Stalinista in Spanish -- minority of the popular revolution of 1978-79.
But enough about his warped definition of a single word. The document is an abomination throughout -- both in what it says and, just as importantly, in what it does not say.
Completely missing from its carefully footnoted pages, for example, are such powerful geopolitical terms as communism, socialism, fascism, colonialism, dictatorship, imperialism, aggression, democracy, liberation, human rights, capitalism, peace, etc.
It should be noted that every one of these terms is under constant attack by communist word-warpers, seeking to redefine them to coincide with soviet imperial designs. (More about his below.)
But despite these major omissions, all is not lost. In the Dictionary's learned pages -- at least until it was withdrawn -- one could learn all about such earthshaking entries as the Badillo Amendment, the Club Des Amies du Sahel, Futurism, the Plaza Accord, the Turnhalle Conference and alas, an aspect of the European Monetary System called "Fat Snake." (!)
There is an entry on "Trigger Price" (for steel imports) but none on Terrorism. The pro-Communist SWAPO and ANC guerillas of Namibia and South Africa are included, but not the anti-Communist UNITA and RENAMO guerillas of Angola and Mozambique. The Moon Treaty is discussed, but not the anti-Soviet Afghan "mujahideen."
Now that the State Department must substantially revise its fatally flawed dictionary, many interest groups will be attempting to influence its content.
Already, the pro-Sandinista Council on Hemispheric Affairs has hotly complained: "The State Department has now muzzled one of the fist non-ideological documents issued during the Reagan administration which vaguely conforms to reality." (The truth of the matter is that this document's conformation with "reality" is vague, indeed.)
Active concern over the content of dictionaries is to some a deadly serious matter. As the distinguished historian and biographer Robert Tucker has said of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's attitude toward such books, "Of all monopolies enjoyed by the State, none should be so crucial as its monopoly on the definition of words. The ultimate weapon of political control would be the dictionary."
The worrisome relevance of Professor Tucker's observation can be found in the fact that the Soviets' newest Stalinist dictator, Mikhail Gorbachev, is currently publishing -- under the Oxford English Dictionary label, no less! -- a new dictionary which contains the following outlandish definitions:
- Socialism -- "a social and economic system which is replacing capitalism."
- Capitalism -- "the system replacing feudalism and preceding communism."
- Communism -- "the revolutionary replacement of capitalism."
- Imperialism -- "the highest and last stage of capitalism."
- Fascism -- "the bourgeois movement and regime, typical of the era of imperialism."
George Orwell! Where are you when we need you?
With so much at stake, President Reagan should accept a little-known recommendation made to him in 1984 (and repeated in 1985) by the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. This was that he remove the subject of semantic disinformation from the State Department -- which has reconfirmed its inability to handle the problem -- and assign it, instead, to a blue-ribbon, bi-partisan panel of experts under the auspices of the National Security Council.
This would be the surest way, first, to elevate the subject to an appropriately high profile of national concern and, second, to ensure that the revised and expanded document will meet the highest standards of truth-in-labeling -- rather than the low, shameful profile of a de facto Dictionary of Disinformation.
Jim Guirard -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com