Who decides what words we, as a society, will adapt to our experiences? Is it the popular culture that introduces new words, such as “Yo” or gives new meanings to words like “bling” or the political spin masters introducing terms such as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or Improvised Explosive Devices (IED)?

Whoever is doing this, please stop. It is hard enough to work with the English language as it currently stands without the need for constantly updating it with terms that are made up and have no true meaning.

Today, I’d like to explore two terms currently being thrown about. Weapons of Mass Destruction and Improvised Explosive Devices.

Weapons of Mass Destruction – Why can’t they be called “bombs”? Its what they are after all isn’t it? They are bombs. Bombs are meant to cause destructions, the bigger the bomb, the bigger the destructions. Did we really need a new term here? Wouldn’t the word “bomb” suffice for a small destructive device and the term “big bomb” be equally as descriptive for something leaving a larger footprint of damage? No, we needed WMD as a made-up excuse to attack a foreign land. It sounds more ominous. Would we ever believe that a few “bombs” would warrant deployment of our children into war duty? Of course we wouldn’t. Whenever I think of the word “bomb” I picture the tattoo on my leg of Natasha Fatale holding a lit cartoon bomb in one hand and a dry martini in the other, laughing maniacally in her cartoon-ish way. I don’t picture destruction. It doesn’t make me agree with invading a sovereign land no matter how messed up its leadership.

Improvised Explosive Devices – These are the new WMD’s, recently dropped onto the American public as a way to sweep away the old terms and freshen up this war and the grip of fear it should have on the American public. Only, these aren’t WMD’s because they’re not sanctioned by a government, or manufactured by one of the many Military-Industrial behemoths cranking out the machines of death. I mean really, if Lockheed, United Technologies, or Raytheon didn’t make it, can it still be considered a “bomb”? Hell no, it has to be called an Improvised Explosive Device. But isn’t this still a “bomb”?

Maybe this is petty, juvenile and misguided, but lets call these things what they are. Weapons of Mass Destruction are big bombs used as a smokescreen to justify a warrant-less war and Improvised Explosive Devices are smaller bombs with a price tag made up of death instead of corporate profits.

The sunset was beautiful last night. I think I’ll focus on that instead, it hurts my head less.