insomnomaniac

Name the War Contest!

I just read this article in the WSJ (pasted in the extended version of this entry) and it made me realize that it was time for a good ol' fashioned naming contest! Celebs, Zoos, Aquariums and others have them all the time, why not countries?

Who coined the term "Cold War" anyway? I mean, it was pretty darn "hot" someplace everyday, millions of people died in this so called "cold" conflict, but the name stuck like glue for over 40 years, and the war itself defined a generation.

As the article points out, this "whatchamacallit" we're in the middle of now, with an enemy we dare not concisely (never mind accurately) name will certainly define the lives of these two little girls:

And your kids, and their friends and if we don't wake up soon, possibly even THEIR kids too.

But what should we call this war? We need something catchy, something that will not only stand the test of time, but capture the imagination of Hollywood enough that they start actually making movies with the REAL bad guys as the bad guys (so they can stop digging up the last war's bad guys and reusing them, it's just not scary enough anymore).

We need a name that will--first and foremost--grab the liberal nutroots by the throat and make them realize it *is* a war in the first place, not some little "insurgency" to rid some noble culture of the evil USA's influence. We need a name that will forever cast them as EQUALS in this fight, so those who insist on burying their heads in the sand can stop pretending they are victims and we are oppressors.

Hey, maybe that's the problem! Maybe those of us who do realize it's a war need to let go a little, maybe we need to take our own pride down a notch. Maybe it is not that liberals hate their own too much, but that we hold ourselves up too high, paint ourselves as too big, too invulnerable, too great, and unintentionally make the nutroot's case for him! Those poor put-upon Islamists, what choice have they BUT to lash out and attempt to take the human race back seven centuries in time? It's all clear to me now...

OK, so you go first, NAME THAT WAR! A war by any other name would still smell like charred flesh and plastic explosives, but it would be harder to WIN.

Better make it good. My little girls are counting on you!

Name That 'War'
By MAX BOOT
April 25, 2007; Page A15
Admiral William Fallon has just made his first major move as Central Command chief. He's begun his tenure by ostentatiously banning the term "Long War" that was coined by his predecessor, Gen. John Abizaid. Yet, so far at least, he has not offered up any superior alternative to describe the "whatchamacallit" that we're in the middle of.

The change of nomenclature was first reported by the Tampa Tribune, Centcom's hometown newspaper, which quoted an email from a spokesman, Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin, who wrote that the old vernacular gave the impression that the U.S. was planning to keep forces in the Middle East for a long time. This is at odds with Adm. Fallon's determination to make progress fast in Iraq and presumably to start withdrawing ASAP. Any suggestion that the U.S. is in for the long haul has also been deemed offensive to Muslim sensibilities. "One of our goals is to lessen our presence over time, [and] we didn't feel that the term 'Long War' captured this nuance," Lt. Col. McLaughlin explained.

Trying to achieve results as fast as possible in Iraq is all well and good -- at least in theory. In practice, however, the "results now" mindset has led the Defense Department and Centcom in the past to slight some time-consuming steps, such as conducting a census of Iraqis or enlarging the U.S. Army, that would have borne major dividends by now, because no one thought that we would still be in Iraq in 2007.

The reality, as we're learning, is that there is no such thing as a quick counterinsurgency. The average full-blown insurgency takes 10 years to defeat; many last decades. (FARC has been battling the Colombian government since the mid-1960s.) It would, of course, be possible to end American involvement in the Iraq War in a few months' time -- but only at the cost of defeat. And American withdrawal wouldn't end the fighting; it would probably expand it.

It's hard to see why dropping the "long war" label would speed up the agonizing, time-consuming process of pacifying Iraq. In fact, the more we speak of our desire to leave, the less likelihood there is that we can do so, because it causes friends and enemies alike to doubt our resolve. This is something that senior administration officials and senior generals have a hard time understanding. For years they've been talking about plans to start withdrawing troops. Even though those plans are always shelved, their very public existence does serious damage to American credibility.

Talk about drawing down the U.S. presence in the entire region is just as counterproductive as talking about exit strategies from Iraq. Just because the leaders of al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran call for our withdrawal doesn't mean that we will reduce tensions by taking their advice. The gains from any such move would be ephemeral, as we learned after we pulled troops out of Saudi Arabia following the liberation of Iraq. Note that this didn't lead to any fall-off in al Qaeda attacks; Islamist propagandists simply found new excuses for their reign of terror. The only result of a general drawdown of U.S. forces in the region would be to cause our friends to seek accommodation with our enemies.

If we're serious about prevailing against Islamist extremists, of both Sunni and Shia cast, we'll be in for a long, difficult fight -- and it's better to speak frankly of that unpleasant reality, if only to prepare our own populace for the setbacks and sacrifices that lie ahead. Yet it's hard to find the right words if you don't even know what to call the post-9/11 period.

The administration started off labeling this the Global War on Terror, even though we had no intention of fighting the IRA, ETA, Tamil Tigers or lots of other terrorists. A more accurate appellation would have been something along the lines of "the War on International Islamist Terror Networks," but that was deemed politically incorrect. Some conservatives, such as Eliot Cohen and Norman Podhoretz, lobbied for "World War IV," on the theory that the Cold War was World War III, but that hasn't caught on.

While unpopular on the right for being too mealy-mouthed, "GWOT" became even more unpopular on the left, where the prevailing dogma is to argue that we shouldn't be at war, at least outside of Afghanistan. The Democratic-controlled House Armed Services Committee even banned the use of "war" to describe whatever it is we're doing against al Qaeda and its ilk. It's not clear what term the Democrats would prefer, but they obviously want to view this as police work or an intelligence operation. In other words, the pre-9/11 mindset.

Donald Rumsfeld, the left's favorite villain, was actually in agreement with the Democrats on this point, largely for parochial bureaucratic reasons. He didn't like calling it a war because this implied that the primary role would be taken by the Department of Defense. Mr. Rumsfeld wanted State, Justice, the CIA and other agencies to step forward. So he tried to call it the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism," a clunky name with an even clunkier acronym (GSAVE, pronounced "gee save") that was promptly and mercifully deep-sixed by the president.

That seemed to leave Mr. Abizaid's coinage "the Long War," redolent of the "Cold War," as the official term. It was presumably more descriptive than "GWOT" and less offensive to (certain) Muslims than, say, the "War on Islamofascism." But that decision has now been thrown into doubt, because Adm. Fallon apparently has concluded that even "Long War" is too inflammatory.

Perhaps Centcom can sponsor a contest to "name this war." Oops. Sorry. Can't call it that. Maybe "name this thingamajig"?

Mr. Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is author of "War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today" (Gotham Books, 2006).

Posted by insomnomaniac at April 25, 2007 8:59 AM | TrackBack