Malignants in the Body Politic: Redefining War Through Metaphor

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In the aftermath of September 11th, President Bush declared the dawn of a new kind of war. He has repeatedly emphasized that means and measures of success in this new war will differ greatly from wars past. Yet, if this war on terrorism is unlike any other war, then what is it like? From the public statements of high-ranking US officials, metaphorical answers emerge: terrorism is a metastasizing cancer, a plague, a threat from which we are not immune. This paper explores the analogies of immunity, infection, and cancer. In doing so it addresses the classic strategic questions, what is the nature of the enemy, and what is the nature of the fight? In the never-ending battle against microbes and 30-year old Swar on cancer, T the enemies are microbes and malignancies-threats from without the body and threats from within. In the context of the announced war on terrorism, I convert these biological and medical themes for reflective contemplation and conclude that the administration might look further to the language of disease to better communicate the challenges of the war on terrorists.