The Power of Words in Wartime

1. Lakoff seems to believe that words give soldiers the ability to kill and not think about who they are fighting, but what they are fighting for. They are also used for the civilians, to help reassure them that soldiers are not simply murdering people with lives and families outside of the war.
2. In a way, I agree and disagree with her. Derogatory words are a very effective way to break the spirit of a person. It also helps the person who dealt the name cope with the killing of another. However, every person is different and some are not effected by such words. Many, in fact, may use the word to boost their drive in the war, sort of like how Americans did with the word "Yankee".
3. I see the essay more about war. While every word she uses can be used at any time, in her essay she is focusing on the usage of the words during wartime, not necessarily the ethics of the words in general.
4. I think she is more or less right that soldiers must take use these words in order to deal with murder. Saying that by using these words, war and torture is inevitable is a bit of a stretch. While it may add on to justifying the cause of a country going to war with another, I'm not sure that name-calling is enough on its own to start a war, at least in modern time.
5. It's a little disappointing that she didn't include any of the names that other countries call us, but I still think that the idea was implied. All of the points she made in her essay, like how we use words to justify killing one another or using them as reassurance that this type of killing is necessary, can apply to any other country as well. So if that's the case, it would seem obvious that they are treating war the same way we are at least in terms of the language used.