Neocon-English Translation

Neil Clark writes:

The internet is full of dictionaries that can translate words and sometimes even phrases, from one language to another. But there's one glaring omission. None of the online dictionaries I have yet seen feature Neo-Con.

Neo-Con may be a very rare language - spoken by no more than 200 people worldwide- and it is undoubtedly dying out. But I think it's a pity that there's no online Neo-Con - English dictionary.

That is, until now. As a free service to readers, I intend to offer, on this blog, the world's first Neo-Con - English translation service.

Neo-Con is a language like no other. Because its speakers never, ever mean what they say.

If a Neo-Con speaker says 'Iran has a nuclear weapons programme' he/she really means 'Iran has no nuclear weapons programme'.

If a Neo-Con speaker says 'Saddam Hussein's Iraq possesses WMD and is a threat to the west', he/she really means 'Saddam Hussein's Iraq possesses no WMD and is not a threat to the west'.

If a neo-con speaker says 'Slobodan Milosevic was a dictator who started six wars', he/she really means 'Slobodan Milosevic was a democratically elected leader who started no wars'.

In time I hope to set up a website which will automatically translate words and phrases used by Neo-Con speakers into English. But in the meantime, I'll be translating Neo-Con articles on an ad hoc basis.

To kick off, here's a translation of a letter, written in Neo-Con by the writer William Shawcross to The Daily Telegraph:

SIR – Andrew Pierce (Comment, February 20) condemns Tony Blair for taking Britain into Iraq: “the most disastrous British foreign policy foray since Suez”. Iraq, he says, is a “stain” for which Mr Blair “will never be forgiven”.

How so? The invasion rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who had killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims, at home and abroad. Serious mistakes by the occupiers were brutally exploited by al-Qaeda and other Islamist enemies of Iraq, but that does not mean that Mr Blair is to blame for the suicide bombers.

Thanks largely to the tactics of General David Petraeus, accepted by President Bush, those ideologues have (at least for now) been defeated. Iraqis have just conducted the most democratic elections ever to have taken place in the Arab world. The results strengthened the secular parties, not the religious extremists.

The Iraqis I know don’t excoriate Mr Blair or Mr Bush; they recognise that their chance for a decent future could never have arisen had Saddam and his gangster sons been allowed to remain in power.

William Shawcross

London W2


Here's a translation of Shawcross's letter, from Neo-Con to English:

How so? The invasion got rid of Saddam Hussein, a man who stood in the way of US hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East. Iraq also possessed very large oil reserves which the US wanted to control.

Iraq’s elections were not the most democratic elections ever to have taken place in the Arab world: those took place in Palestine in 2006, but as the ‘wrong side’ won those elections, we don’t acknowledge them to have been democratic.

The war has been great for corporate profiteers and has also removed from power a supporter of the Palestinian cause.

I know about five or six Iraqis.