Metaphor Used by the US as a Lethal Weapon of Mass Destruction against the Other for Pursuing Ulterior Motives

Abstract

To get access to the resources-rich central Asian states and to nip in the bud the state of Afghanistan, that had proclaimed itself under the Taliban regime to be a state run solely under the ideology and system of Islam- the next threat to The US after the socialism-the US, after the 9/11 incident, took resource to using the linguistic weapon of metaphor before and along the surgical strikes and managed to beset the thoughts of every individual on the globe. It was successfully used as a justification to approve finances from the US Parliament for mongering an uncalled for war, to enlist moral support of its citizens by means of instilling fear in them, to elicit active financial and personnel support of its European allies and to silence the international community from raising its voice against the attack. It is the domain of cognitive linguistic where  these  conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, are used to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. This study focused on identifying the conceptual metaphors used in the War on Terror discourse for influencing opinion against the enemy and dehumanizing it. Metaphors are used in the conceptual domain of covering the false ideas of the US and influencing the world to manipulate and pursue their ulterior motives. There actual motive was to get the justified war on terror as legal and the only source of getting away with it. They influenced the world with their justified war on terror policy and gained their motives.