The Guardian view on Trump’s civilisational threats: the words that fuel war must be condemned | Editorial

• 01Linguist George Lakoff wrote that metaphors can kill and that pernicious metaphor use hides realities in harmful ways, citing US employment of business cost-and-benefit analogies and sporting comparisons during the Gulf War.
• 02The US military historically used euphemisms including 'collateral damage' for civilian deaths and 'surgical strikes' for military operations.
• 03Trump issued a threat that 'a whole civilisation will die tonight' unless Iran agreed to a deal, according to his statement on Tuesday.
• 04Trump previously threatened to bomb Iran 'back to the stone age' and destroy bridges and power plants.
• 05Trump stated he was 'not at all' concerned about potential war crimes.
• 06A two-week ceasefire was declared this week, though it appeared at risk of collapse within hours.
• 07Talks between Iran and the US were scheduled for Islamabad this weekend.
• 08Israel conducted a 10-minute mass strike on Lebanon that killed dozens of children, a poet, two journalists and hundreds more people, which Israel called 'Operation eternal darkness'.
• 09The Israeli military has killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire was declared there six months ago.
• 10Political philosopher Mathias Risse wrote that 'the language of civilizational destruction is not merely the symptom of atrocity but one of its instruments'.

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Trump issued a threat that a civilization would die unless Iran agreed to a deal, leading to a declared two-week ceasefire and scheduled talks in Islamabad, though the ceasefire faced immediate risk of collapse. Meanwhile, Israel conducted a large strike on Lebanon that killed hundreds of people, including civilians. The article argues that explicit threats of mass destruction, combined with historical military euphemisms, represent a shift in how military operations are rhetorically framed and that such threats constitute war crimes under international law.