Evening Standard: Operation 'Name This War'
FORGET the military preparations: the Pentagon's real challenge is choosing the right codename for this war, writes David Rowan.
For a day last week, planners were calling it 'Operation Infinite Justice' - in the great tradition, they thought, of Desert Storm and Just Cause. But after Muslims objected that only Allah can dispense infinite justice, and liberals warned of an 'infinite' conflict, the defence machine went into retreat.
We have a conflict that needs a name.
This is not a new problem. After President Bush Senior ordered the 1989 invasion of Panama, the Pentagon was finalising plans for ' Operation Blue Spoon' when a last-minute phone call arrived from a senior commander. 'Do you want your grandchildren to say you were in Blue Spoon?' he asked. The White House thought again: Americans weren't ready to fight for a blue spoon - although they might back 'Operation Just Cause'.
Since then, the US military has realised the PR value of choosing the right codename. When US Marines helped in the Bangladeshi typhoon in 1991, Gen Colin Powell worried that the public would never warm to 'Operation Productive Effort'. 'After a day of struggling with Productive Effort, I said to my staff, 'We've just got to get a better name,' ' he recalled.
When local papers described the US saviours as angels arriving from the sea, it became Operation Sea Angel. This time, 'something traditional and martial would be fine,' Scott Rosenberg of Salon magazine wrote last week. 'Operation Blue Eagle, or: Mountain Hawk, whatever - anything that doesn't make us feel like the war we're embarking on has an impossible goal and an unreachable end.'
(Evening Standard, September 28 2001)
For a day last week, planners were calling it 'Operation Infinite Justice' - in the great tradition, they thought, of Desert Storm and Just Cause. But after Muslims objected that only Allah can dispense infinite justice, and liberals warned of an 'infinite' conflict, the defence machine went into retreat.
We have a conflict that needs a name.
This is not a new problem. After President Bush Senior ordered the 1989 invasion of Panama, the Pentagon was finalising plans for ' Operation Blue Spoon' when a last-minute phone call arrived from a senior commander. 'Do you want your grandchildren to say you were in Blue Spoon?' he asked. The White House thought again: Americans weren't ready to fight for a blue spoon - although they might back 'Operation Just Cause'.
Since then, the US military has realised the PR value of choosing the right codename. When US Marines helped in the Bangladeshi typhoon in 1991, Gen Colin Powell worried that the public would never warm to 'Operation Productive Effort'. 'After a day of struggling with Productive Effort, I said to my staff, 'We've just got to get a better name,' ' he recalled.
When local papers described the US saviours as angels arriving from the sea, it became Operation Sea Angel. This time, 'something traditional and martial would be fine,' Scott Rosenberg of Salon magazine wrote last week. 'Operation Blue Eagle, or: Mountain Hawk, whatever - anything that doesn't make us feel like the war we're embarking on has an impossible goal and an unreachable end.'
(Evening Standard, September 28 2001)
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