war titles

Carleen Huxley — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:47:04 +0000

There’s a girl at the library sitting at a computer in front of my desk with a sweater on that reads “Operation Iraqi Freedom” on the back. This reminds me of something I’ve always wondered about when it comes to “naming” a war and what the criteria of a war has to be before it is called a “World War”. Right now, we are having a War on Terror. When you think about it, this is a rather strange and obscure title. In this case, terror is supposed to be synonomous with “terrorism”, but really if we just say terror then we could technically claim war on anything that instills fear into people. Spiders, snakes, possums, men driving big trucks, my old history teacher.
Then there’s this idea of an “operation”. Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Is this supposed to be a kind of pre-war title? I can just see the president: “Let’s just go in and operate first, just to see how things go, then we can declare war.” I don’t mean to sound so sarcastic. It’s the name of the war that people will remember. Sometimes the name itself seems to cause so many misperceptions.

Carleen and Mike » 2004 » June » 24

war titles