Narrative: This word is highly valued by the Middle East Expert because it beautifully reduces the empirically verifiable to the category of a hotly contested theory or abstract construct. E.g., “The narrative that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy is totally simplistic.” Genetically developed in the amino acids of philosophical relativism, moral equivalence and comparative literature doctoral programs, narrative also conflates reality with idle opinion: one man’s is no better or more provable than anyone else’s. E.g., “The narrative that ISIS is doing anything worse than what the US has done in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram is bullshit.”
Political solution: Whenever war in Arabia looms, this phrase is to be invoked to pretend that it isn’t, or that it can be stopped by non-war. Somewhat complementarily, its usage ensures that one will never be confused with a neocon (see below). Lately, political solution has also served as a prerequisite for Middle East Experts applying for jobs in the Obama administration through the unusual channels of newspaper or magazine op-eds.
Facts on the ground: Once perfected by Israeli expansionists to account for how land that was not theirs could magically become so with a little demographic adjustment, this phrase now encompasses new worlds of epistemological overstatement. Can any one person truly claim to have a grasp of all the facts in any one place, much less something so geographically indeterminate as “the ground”? Which ground? Where does one ground end and become another ground? The answer, of course, is yes.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member