16. "Boots on the ground."

As a way of referring to the presence of soldiers, "boots on the ground" appeared in the New York Times only 12 times between 1851 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then it took off, rising to 34 in 2007, slacking to 17 in 2010, and now, with the Libyan action, it's hit 16 in three months and is getting play at every level, journalistic and political. Its attraction, apparently, is in the way it brings the distant ("troops present") close to the concrete reality. General Bernard E. Trainor made sure nobody would miss the political bite in it when he said, in 1999, "If you want to radically change the behavior of your opponent, it takes boots on the ground to do it.'' Lose the lofty pretensions. Boots. There. "With," he could expect us to add, "flesh in them." An expression that makes a dangerous semantic situation even more dangerous is not going to be welcomed by the Obama administration but they have to deal with it. "Are there going to be boots on the ground in Libya?" Everybody knows that some of the people in those boots will be killed. The administration knows that they will not just be killed but that they will turn into what Serge Schmemann called "televisable casualties." "No," says their spokesman. What else can he say? The public grieves over televisable casualties. But it also grieves over the victory of evil-doers. Gadhafi is an evil-doer, as Saddam Hussein was an evil-doer. If only there were a way to remove the evil-doer without televisable casualties. Here's where the old semantic try comes in. You send pilots, whose boots are in the air. Or you put CIA people, who don't wear boots, on the ground. Your "no boots on the ground" stands. Linguistic analysts can find the administration's choice of words entertaining (ha, ha, those booted pilots, those CIA guys in sneakers) but they have to recognize that Obama's people are wrestling with a very old, very difficult problem: how to balance the public's attractions to both goodness and security. Love of the good moves them to action against evil, as seen in Gadhafi. Love of security holds them back, making them ask, "Will the action make us safer?" Only a yes answer justifies the casualties. I remember once when the public was very grateful to an administration for putting security ahead of goodness. In 1942 it was good to have nothing to do with fascists. Then the administration, to secure the safety of American troops landing in Africa, cozied up to Admiral Darlan, a despicable fascist, and made a deal with him. The boots made it to African ground with few casualties. We saw that if you love good purely you weaken yourself, take high casualties, give Hitler a better chance, and maybe lose out to the big evil. Thank you, thank you, President Roosevelt. On the other hand, pure love of security can, in the end, itself weaken security. It was love of its own security that, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, kept the U.S. from joining any international effort that might have stopped Germany before it was too late. I remember the isolationist argument that yes, he was an evil-doer, "but we've got three thousand miles of ocean" to give us security. No boots for the Rhineland, where Hitler could have been most easily stopped. Every president contemplating military action has to measure public desire on two scales, a good-evil scale and a safety-danger scale. When the contemplated object of the action is both evil and a danger, as Hitler was, the president has it easy. When the object is neither evil nor a danger, as China has been most of its life, he has it easy. When both register, but one is higher than the other, he has it fairly easy. He just has to make sure of his reading. It's when they're close, as I think they are with Qadhafi, that he's got the big balance problem, and can't help trying to solve it with words.

15. President Obama's Speech.

Television images are so powerful that just a reminder of them can carry an audience. "I refused to wait for images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action," said President Obama and the American people were reminded of screens full of horrors in Bosnia, or Kosovo, or Rwanda, or Darfur. "Oh, thank you for saving us from more evenings like that."

Sympathy has to fill a big part of Obama's political screen. He doesn't want to hear "Why didn't you do something?" at the end of those evenings. On the other hand he doesn't want to hear, evening after evening, "Still doing something? For what?" Or, worse, "Did you have to slaughter?" He can't give the public the Clausewitz answer ("Yes, if I was going to stop slaughter.") Sympathy is the hardest force in the world to manage.

It can also be the most dangerous. Sympathy with brothers across a border has probably produced more wars than any force in history. Make a powerful tribe a minority on the territory of another tribe, introduce discrimination, oppression, maybe some killing, and bang, you've got a war. Think of all the borders badly drawn for ethnicity. Think of Europe, the Balkans. Sympathy can be lethal.

And it can provide an altruistic cover for self-interest. Want a country's gold, or wheat, or oil? Find some brothers who need protection. You're in.

So we've got tribal sympathy and cynical sympathy. That leaves just plain human sympathy. Obama, led by the American public, could (as Gwynne Dyer has argued) be "acting from very selfless and humanitarian motives." We already had the oil through Gadhafi, Dyer points out. We have absolutely no tribal connection to the rebels. We just can't stand seeing human beings treated like that.

Obama probably knows that acting on that kind of sympathy can, over time, make him responsible for more suffering than he faced at the beginning, and leave him looking very foolish. It's a gamble. And he takes that gamble, even adding to his stake, every time he uses one of those sympathy-arousing words — "slaughter," "massacre," "genocide." Whatever his deficiencies in semantic accuracy you can't say he lacks semantic courage.

14. "Mind-boggling" — and "numbing," and "bending," and "blowing."

"Mind-boggling" was first used by New York Times writers in the 1960s, got a boost from Senator Howard Baker when he used it to describe John Dean's testimony during the Watergate hearings in 1973, surged in the 80s and 90s, climbed to around 11 uses a month after the turn of the century, and in the last thirty days, in what looks like another surge, has been used in articles 36 times.

Before 1964 overwhelmed minds were mainly numbed, though after 1966 they could also be bent, and after 1974 blown. No mind between 1851 and the Great Depression apparently registered enough shock to bring forth from Times writers any special terms. "Striking," "extraordinary," "overwhelming," and "astonishing, used without reference to the mind," seemed to serve.

In the New York Review of Books a smaller and more academic readership could see minds boggle in 1972 and numb in 1975. They had been bending since 1968. Over the whole life of the New York Review, from 1963 to the present, minds were blown only four times.

I am grateful for "mind-boggling." It takes me up that notch that, with some things (like John Dean's testimony), I need to go. It's like calling, now, a fundamental shift or change "seismic." I hear there's been "a seismic shift in global politics." I'm right down there with the tectonic plates, feeling the support for everything move around. Talk about fundament! "Boggle" puts my mind in the same situation, with all the scenery shaking.

Is my reaction a sign that those special words will have legs? No, because I'm too worked up by them, so worked up that I'm conscious of how good they are, and, inevitably, of how good the writer is. That does no harm to the words in their early uses but it's definitely harmful later when I start to say, "Oh, another writer being good." Then, when writers can't stop at what deserves to be called "seismic" or "boggling," or take me up notches I shouldn't go to, they cut the legs right off their word. I get sick of it and turn with relief back to the ordinary words.

13. Obama's Words: A Cost Analysis

Start with silence. What does President Obama lose if he says nothing to support the rebels in Libya? Favor with all the rebels in other Arab countries. Something for them to associate with the U.S. backing of dictators. If the rebels represent the wave of the future he falls behind it.

What did he lose with his first firm statement of support, "Muammar Qaddafi must leave" (NYT, 2-26)? His chance to remain completely free of commitment, which in the end could mean another casualty-producing engagement abroad. To avoid losing that chance now he'd have to change his view, in which case he'd be called a "flip-flopper" and lose points to the firm and decisive party.

What did he gain by later changing the wording of his statement, "It's our policy that Qadhafi needs to go" (NYT 3-21)? A chance at a point-saving wiggle. "Needs to" can be represented as wise observation on the head-of-state job. Or simple advice. "What you need to do at this point, Muammar..." Except that he stated it as "policy," which may have lost him as many points with the casualty-fearing party (not to mention the clarity party) as it gained him with the rebels (not to mention the firm-and-decisive party). But he must have seen where "must" was taking him.

The word market has this in common with the stock market: events often determine point-loss. The Libyan revolution could fail. There could be a string of failures. The wave he strained to catch could turn out to be a wavelet. Or, maybe worse, a wave not of pro-democratic forces but of pro-my-tribe forces. Going long on "policy" and "must" could lose him a bundle.

You can't end there, though, smart analysts. You have to go back to the cost of silence. Picture a world watching people suffer agonies they know President Obama, more than any leader in the world, had the power to prevent. Though with some the sympathy they feel might be tribal (my blood, my kind of people, my democracy-lovers), and therefore suspect as, historically, a leading motive for military aggression, with many it will be just human sympathy — as it was among watchers of Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, and Darfur. Whichever, Obama (or his advisers) have to factor it in. And, unlike us analysts, do it bang, in the moment of choosing a word. Only the most inhuman analyst could fail to sympathize.

12. Word-Watch: The Libyan Intervention (2)

"It's our policy that Gadhafi has to go." "Policy" doesn't work in that sentence. "Belief" works. "Opinion" works. "Policy" works only if you're declaring a plan or course of action.

That's judging by a lexical standard. If you judge by a rhetorical, or political, standard, it works. If a President prefaces a crisis statement with "Let me be perfectly clear" (as nearly every American president since Nixon speaking about, and presumably to, a potential enemy has done), sets his jaw, and speaks strong words ("has to" is strong; "policy," as a statement of aim is strong) then his statement, whatever its lexical shortcomings, is going to do some work on a lot of people.

The times determine what work is needed. Our failure in two quagmire wars has been attributed to lack of a clear, firm statement of aims by the President taking us into them. That hangs over Obama's head, along with the vocabularies used to take us in.

At the moment, since "regime change" (Iraq) has joined "surgical strike" and "evil" on the contaminated list, Obama can't finish his sentence with the lexically appropriate conclusion to "It's our policy": "to remove dictators like Gadhafi from office." He must leave his country out of the moving, the quagmire direction. ("No, no," he had Admiral Mullen reassure us, "we are not targeting Gadhafi.") You can see why Obama (or his writers) like "has to"; it has the firmness of necessity while leaving agency up in the air. Who knows who the remover will be?

Obama's problem, like that of every president considering the use of military force, is to find good words ("protecting civilians," "meeting the humanitarian threat") broad enough to cover the bad things he has to do at the moment (kill people, the end military force is driven to) to gain a good thing in the future (people not being killed). It's the old ethical problem of a good end requiring bad means, and the old political problem of the public not being able to see, or bear, the means to the good end they really want, and will vote you out of office if they don't get.

11. Word-Watch: The Libyan Intervention

Was ever a president in a more ticklish semantic situation? American and allied planes have just wiped out a Gadhafi column heading for Benghazi. If ever a military action deserved the name "surgical strike" this one did. It was precise, limited, clean, and expertly done. Yet the Obama administration couldn't call it a "surgical strike" because that was Lyndon Johnson's expression for the first actions that sucked us into Viet Nam. Use of it would provoke the here-we-go-again response.

The same is probably true of "evil." Obama can't use it because it was George W. Bush's high-suction word for the "axis" Iraq was said to be part of. No careful speechwriter wants to remind the left and middle of the right's play (with a "more theological" word than "hatred") for evangelical support. So there goes that one, no matter what awful thing Gadhafi does.

The expression "protecting civilians," used to describe the aim of the whole operation (Odyssey Dawn), comes with none of that earlier baggage but already it's causing trouble. It covered what, according to the Associated Press, we were doing in that strike, "preventing Moammar Gadhafi's forces from inflicting more violence on civilians — particularly in and around the rebel stronghold of Benghazi." Trying to picture civilians who weren't rebels and rebels who weren't civilians and locate them all with respect to the stronghold was too much even for the straight-faced NBC reporter.

You can find a word a casualty-wary public will accept but it's so hard to keep from stretching it. The other aim of Odyssey Dawn was to "degrade the Libyan military's ability to contest a no-fly zone." For the Benghazi strike you had to stretch the acceptable "no-fly" to "no-drive." If you didn't you had something like "tanks caught taxiing toward rebel stronghold." You could tell by the reporter's face that this line wouldn't hold for long, at least among the verbally sophisticated.

Does the reaction of the sophisticated, the reporters and the pundits and the professors, matter much? It's the voting masses (meaning only those so busy making a living they don't have time for careful examination) who in the end determine military action. If suffering humanity is to be relieved, and these words work on those masses to relieve it, what case do we have for a sophisticated view?

10. Removed