One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

Words exist only in hindsight; time passes over and around them like water along a canyon floor. In the year or so between when I write these words and when they are published, perhaps so many innocent people will have been killed, so many mass graves discovered, that it will not be so controversial to state plainly what is plainly known. But for now we argue, in this part of the world, the part not reduced to rubble, about how words make us feel. It’s a kind of pastime. Almost every day an influential opinion columnist or think tank expert or spokesperson for the president of the United States will feign outrage at how hurtful words such as “genocide” and “occupation” are, how disparaging, how uncouth. I have seen, almost daily, for months, images of children mutilated, starved to death, executed. Bodies in pieces. Parents burying limbs. In time, there will be nothing particularly controversial about using these words to describe the things they were created to describe. (The very history of the word “genocide,” meant as a mechanic of forewarning rather than some after-the-fact resolution, is littered with instances of the world’s most powerful governments going to whatever lengths they can to avoid its usage, because usage is attached to obligation. It was never intended to be enough to simply call something genocide: one is required to act.) Once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it’s just so much s...