GLOBE EDITORIAL
InsensitiveIT'S TIME to reacquaint Dick Cheney with the dictionary. Last week, in full campaign mode, the vice president mercilessly mocked Democrat John Kerry for saying he would conduct a more "sensitive" foreign policy if elected president.
"A sensitive war will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans," sneered Cheney at a campaign stop in Ohio. Of course, what Kerry said was more complex: "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror," he told a convention of minority journalists. No doubt the Bush campaign didn't want to dwell on the words "effective" or "thoughtful" in parsing Kerry's vocabulary, so Cheney tried to change the subject: "Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively," he said to appreciative chuckles. "They need to be destroyed." Cheney twisted the word so thoroughly that voters could be excused for thinking that Kerry wants to host teas with the terrorists. But let's go to the text: Webster's New World Non-partisan Dictionary lists the definition of "sensitive" the way Kerry meant it: "having or showing keen sensitivities, highly perceptive or responsive intellectually." Sure, the word has roots in French and Latin, but we don't think that should disqualify a perfectly good adjective from political discourse. And never mind that President Bush said in 2001, "We must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence." Or that in April, Cheney himself said, "We're not insensitive" to fears that US troops could make life more dangerous for ordinary Iraqis. When the campaign season begins, language is fair game for distortion. A few weeks ago the Bush campaign was using the word "pessimism" as a weapon against Kerry for daring to question the direction of the economy. The monthly jobs report was poor, so Cheney said, "It's a choice between President Bush's hope and optimism and Senator Kerry's pessimism." This even as Kerry was picking Mr. Sunshine, John Edwards, as his running mate. The word "nuance" -- another subversive French word -- has forever lost its meaning, as has "French" itself; how long before French fries get their reputation back? The truth is that a sensitive foreign policy -- one that is precise and calibrated to the specific challenge at hand -- is just what the country needs. If the nation's intelligence gathering had been a little more sensitive, there might have been better information about weapons of mass destruction -- isn't that what the 9/11 commission has just concluded? Indeed, sensitive -- perceptive, responsive, strategic, intelligent -- is all the things the Bush administration's blunderbuss war strategy wasn't.
No wonder Cheney disdains the word. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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