Timing, nature, murder
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language,” his 1946 essay on the relationship between ugly writing and cruel ideology. If you make your living with words, a regular rereading can have a tonic effect. An example: I initially typed “symbiotic relationship” in the first sentence, and immediately erased it as an example of the sort of dead phrasemaking that Orwell abhors.
On Tuesday, the Times
Union’s Washington correspondent asked U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik for her response to President Donald J. Trump’s statement on the CIA’S conclusion that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Her office’s answer was brief, but deserves some footnoted analysis:
“Congresswoman Stefanik is deeply concerned [1] by the timing [2] and nature [3] of
Jamal Khashoggi’s death. [4] As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congresswoman Stefanik has been closely monitoring [5] the investigations surrounding Jamal Khashoggi’s death [6] and will be reviewing [7] various options with her colleagues in Congress to bring his killers to justice.” [8]
1. Unlike “angry” or “outraged,” “concerned” could be used to describe your reaction to the news that an elderly uncle has broken a hip. Adding “deeply” represents a classic attempt to pump up the meaning of “concerned” beyond the verb’s standard tolerance.
2. Stefanik’s office never responded to my request for an explanation of why the timing of Khashoggi’s murder concerned her. All involved — including, after weeks of lying about it, the Saudis — agree that he was set upon inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, where he had gone to collect documents that would allow him to remarry, around
1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 2. Was this too soon after lunch, or was Stefanik worried that Khashoggi’s fiancee might have to forfeit deposits for wedding caterers or a dance band?
3. Nor did the congresswoman or her spokespeople explain why the nature of Khashoggi’s death was concerning — sorry, deeply concerning to her. Was it the fact that he died as the result of being murdered? Or was it the method employed by his assassins, who according to the most recent explanation from Riyadh injected him with a lethal dose of tranquilizers before dismembering him? I’ll be all ears for more detail on Stefanik’s wetwork preferences, but perhaps she should reserve her concern for Khashoggi’s killing itself, and not its timing and nature.
4. Why “death” and not “murder”? Probably because the
phrase “the timing and nature of Khashoggi’s murder” would point up the howling insufficiency of the references to timing and nature in the preceding prepositional phrase.
5. Stefanik is fond of monitoring. After we learned in March 2017 that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had failed to disclose his contacts with Russian diplomats during the 2016 presidential campaign, her spokesman assured us she was “monitoring the situation and has concerns” — yes! — “with what if anything was not disclosed about these meetings.”
After the U.S. bombing of Syrian military targets a month later, Stefanik noted that “the world watched in horror as the Assad regime used chemical weapons to murder dozens of men, women and children.” (One imagines her vacillating between “murder” and “cause the deaths of.”) “The Obama administration policy towards Syria has failed and we need a new strategy. As a Member of the House Armed Services Committee, this will be an important part of our work, and I will be monitoring the situation closely with my colleagues.”
“Monitoring” is one of those verbs that seems active but describes a passive action. Events are happening elsewhere; you are staring at them.
6. Stefanik’s statement was released days after the CIA’S findings were reported, so it’s odd that she fails to mention them. It’s unclear what “investigations surrounding Jamal Khashoggi’s death” denotes (again with “death,” but thanks for repeating his first name for those who thought the statement had taken a swerve and was referring to Scott or Nancy Khashoggi), though avoiding mention of the CIA report allows Stefanik to act as if the perpetrators remain undetermined. Her office declined to say whether she had studied the agency’s findings.
7. Is reviewing like monitoring? Discuss.
8. At long last, a promise “to bring his killers to justice.” It took almost 50 words to acknowledge that Khashoggi was killed, but one must take what one can get. Here again, we have a cliche — straight out of the Old West — in place of living language.
The U.S. will not be able to bring Khashoggi’s death-causers to justice because they are in the custody of the government that killed him. They might end up conveniently dead or dropped down a deep hole in the Emirates, but Congress won’t have anything to do with it.
The House and Senate, however, have a role to play in changing this nation’s policies toward Saudi Arabia — a nation that, like President Trump, is not mentioned in Stefanik’s statement.