What's in a Name?

On page three of The Daily Princetonian on Thursday, Professor Robert George wrote an extremely well-reasoned and lucid column weighing the moral arguments for and against a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. "Supporters of pre-emptive military action," he writes, "point to the fact that Saddam has a consistent record of defying UN mandates . . . Unless Saddam is removed from power, they argue, he will obtain nuclear weapons and use them, or threaten to use them as part of a strategy of extorting concessions from his victims." While these are certainly important issues that Prof. George is raising, they lose some of their intellectual luster due to his choice of phrasing: he refers to the leader of Iraq, President Hussein, by his first name.

In fact, not once in the article does Prof. George ever refer to Mr. Hussein as anything other than "Saddam," whereas he identifies by full name and title such figures as National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

I bring this up not to pick on Prof. George, but to point out a broader trend, for Prof. George is by no means alone in how he chooses to name the Iraqi president. Such writers as William Safire and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times consistently refer to Mr. Hussein as "Saddam" in their columns. Given that these men are editorialists, one can argue that they should be allowed a certain amount of leeway in their choice of a formal or informal writing style.

But it is even more disturbing to note that even news stories, written in the international news section of The Times, have titles that refer to Mr. Hussein as "Saddam." On Sept. 18, The Times ran a headline that read, "Keep Pressure on Saddam, UK's Blair Urges." On the same day, The Times ran another story titled "Bush, Saddam, Democrats in Showdown." One has to wonder why President Bush is entitled to reference by his last name, but Mr. Hussein is not.

Our public habit of attaching first-name-only status to Mr. Hussein probably stems from President George H.W. Bush's propensity to do so during the first Gulf war. This is a practice for which he was occasionally criticized, since it was rightly said that he was over-personalizing the conflict and descending into the rhetoric of machismo. How Bush's informal style gained acceptance among the print media, however, is a mystery.

Historically, the journalistic and editorial practice of addressing public figures by their surnames did not arise out of any respect for the individual per se. For instance, this is a courtesy that was extended to such monsters as Hitler and Bin Laden — but not of out of respect for the person but for the stature and legitimacy of the publication.

Some might think that this is a point not even worth bringing up, but I think they underestimate the power that words have on ideas. Words matter. I have a genuine concern for the quality of public debate that we are currently giving ourselves on the issue of Iraq.

When the semantic quality of discourse deteriorates so too does the intellectual force of the arguments. Ultimately, I want to make sure that if our country does have to go to war, it is with a country, not a first name. James Saulino is a senior in the Wilson School, from Akron, Ohio. He can be reached at jsaulino@princeton.edu.