Washington wordplay: Barack Obama isn't the first president to recognize the power of words in communicating with--and convincing--the American people.

• Author: Baker, Peter
• Position: NATIONAL

When President Obama briefed congressional leaders at the White House on his plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, offered some advice: Whatever you do, he told the President, don't call it a "surge."

Not to worry. The President didn't and probably won't. Their conversation underscores the sensitivity about language in Washington: The Obama administration--like those that preceded it--is busily scrubbing the previous administration's lexicon, if not necessarily all of its policies, particularly in the area of national security.

The U.S. may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as President Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a "surge." The U.S. may still be holding people captured on various battlefields at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer "enemy combatants." We may be continuing the fight against Al Qaeda, but it is no longer a "war on terror."

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So if not a war on terror, what then? "Overseas contingency operations." And terrorist attacks? "Man-caused disasters."

Every White House picks its words carefully, using language tested in polls and focus groups to frame issues and advance its goals. When President Ronald Reagan wanted to support groups fighting against Communist governments in Latin America, he dubbed them "freedom fighters." When President Bill Clinton wanted to overhaul the welfare system, he christened the proposal "welfare to work" to give it an uplifting feel.

'WORDS ARE WEAPONS'

Of course, politicians aren't the only ones who choose their words to convey their own views and convince others to agree with them. History textbooks call the 1861-65 war between the North and South the Civil War, but in the South, you'll still sometimes hear about the "War of Northern Aggression."

"In wartime, words are weapons," says William Satire, who writes the weekly "On Language" column in The New York Times.

"We have seen how Israelis and Palestinians are highly sensitive to connotations in their conflict," says Safire, noting that some Israelis have "preferred to refer to the land in dispute west of the Jordan River by biblical names: Judea and Samaria, evoking Hebrew origins; Israeli diplomats long tried 'administrative territories.' Palestinians call it the West Bank and have won that terminological battle."

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