Buck's recent post on the cluelessness of Donald Rumsfeld, plus a comment by Michael Hayden during his confirmation hearing on the radio yesterday, reminded me of one of my hobby horses: the misuse of metaphorical language. Here's Rumsfeld in a speech a while ago:

If I were grading I would say we probably deserve a 'D' or a 'D-plus' as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today.

The phrase "battle of ideas" or "war of ideas" comes up often when we talk about the war in Iraq; Hayden used the latter phrase today. If I'd been the Senator questioning Hayden, I might have asked, "So we're fighting a metaphorical war?" And Hayden naturally would have replied, "We're fighting a real war, but part of it is which side's set of ideas is accepted in the end, and that's what I meant by a 'war of ideas'."

All this is fine. What's problematic, though, is when the distinction between the metaphorical war and the real war is blurred. If you say that you're fighting terrorism, when what you're really doing is promoting the ideas of democracy, peace, moderation, and so forth, then you're fighting only in a metaphorical sense. You won't get killed or injured in your fight if you lose; you won't get as much as a bloody nose (unless perhaps you pursue your metaphorical battles with drunks in a bar).

What are the dangers of conflating a war of ideas with an actual war? The first danger is obvious and relatively minor: confusing talking with actual fighting. The 101st Fighting Keyboardists are possibly the worst offenders, by giving themselves a name that implies that they're in some sense doing the same job as soldiers who are doing the actual work of fighting in a war. Soldiers themselves have traditionally ridiculed such comparisons; fans of Bill Mauldin, for example, will be familiar with the contrasts between soldiers working on the front line and those in the rear echelon. The second, more insidious danger is thinking that the war of ideas can be won using tactics appropriate for real war. We've seen this in Tom Tancredo's infamous suggestion that Mecca might be bombed. Bombing Mecca was suggested as an appropriate retaliation for a nuclear attack on the U.S. by Islamic terrorists. Consider that none of these terrorists would presumably be in Mecca at the time, which undercuts the retaliation aspect of such an action. Tancredo's view seems to have been that the ideas behind Islamic extremism could be eliminated by force, which is questionable at best. For another example, we see a constant stream of commentary on the right calling for the imprisonment and sometimes even the execution of those holding liberal views, based not on their actions (e.g., releasing classified information to the public) but on their opinions alone (e.g., we are losing the war in Iraq; Bush is incompetent; some U.S. soldiers have committed atrocities and their superiors should be held accountable). In the battle for people's hearts and minds, it should be obvious that killing people is not an effective means of persuasion, either for those who have been killed or those who share their views. In a war of ideas, you win not by killing anyone who disagrees with you, but rather by persuading them to move to your side.