According to AP, international peacekeeping efforts in Lebanon are getting bogged down by terminology:
“They call it `constructive ambiguity,'” one ex-U.N. official, Timur Goksel, said disparagingly of vague passages in Resolution 1701….
Questions focus on a paragraph deep in the lengthy document, in which the council authorizes the strengthened U.N. force “to take all necessary action” to, among other things, ensure no “hostile activities” take place in its zone, and to “protect civilians.”
“What constitutes `hostile activities’?” asked Tufts University’s Johnstone, a one-time U.N. peacekeeping official who edits an annual journal on peace operations….
The specialists say distinguishing between defensive and offensive Israeli actions could prove difficult – if Hezbollah, for example, is detected building up arms in a village.
One Irish blogger, Big Ulsterman, summed up the problem of “constructive ambiguity” a few years ago:
Beautiful, eh? Two statements which aren’t in conflict with each other in any way: two sides of the same coin, the same logic expressed differently – and presented in a way each audience just wanted to lap up. Slurp.
Trouble is, as well as being conveyors of meaning, the same words can also impose limitations – but of course in the world of constructive ambiguity the words have to be so emotive, so tempting, so desirable as to blind the hearer to the steel fence being erected around him. The abhorrent thing about constructive ambiguity is its deliberate manipulation. Indeed, the very phrase itself has been crafted to sound upbeat and wholesome. Desirable even.
If the UN peacekeepers are deliberately keeping the definition of “hostile activity” muddied, can we expect the media — still ambiguous over the word “terror” — to accurately convey what’s happening in southern Lebanon?
