The "Thirty Years War" is taken

At long last the American military and its civilian superintendents have returned to what's really important: debating a war-sloganeering campaign of easily parroted language.

I must admit I was unaware that the last and now semi-retired phrase used to describe our self-destruction in Iraq had even risen to the qualifying level of a marketing campaign. But for the White House and Pentagon it had; and its obscurity was reason enough, I suppose, to change linguistic horses. Slogans -- like "war on terror" -- aren't of much value if they're not quotation-markable.

Such was the case with the retiring "long war," which the New York Times reports was "coined" by Gen. John Abizaid before his own retirement from Central Command. Why this bit of verbal framing never caught on like Donald Trump's equally banal "You're fired" is beyond me, but such are the vagaries of Madison Avenue.

At any rate Central Command's incoming poo-bah, Adm. William Fallon, decided that "long war" was, I guess, neither sufficiently catchy, or, of greater relevance, particularly smart. So he has quietly laid it to rest. The phraseology was supposed to convey to us Americans and our few (and fewer) friends that we are engaged in a protracted death struggle against that other phraseology, "Islamofascism." But all it really did, said cultural advisers to Central Command, was reinforce the rather undesirable notion among indigenous Middle Easterners that the U.S. was there to stay -- Bradley tanks, cluster bombs and all.

Why it took cultural advisers to enlighten the military on this less than subtle impropriety of neocolonial imperialism is just as beyond me as the vagaries of boffo sloganeering, but their advice on the obvious was required nevertheless. One can only assume they also had to advise against using "America: It owns your sorry sectarian ass."

But on what I find to be a more revealing note, a spokesman for Central Command -- Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin -- emailed the NYT on the phraseology's retirement, and his comments must have been quite disconcerting to the White House. Dropping "long war," he wrote, "is a product of our ongoing effort to use language that describes the conflict for our Western audience while understanding the cultural implications of how that language is construed in the Middle East. The idea that we are going to be involved in a 'Long War,' at the current level of operations, is not likely and unhelpful."

Furthermore, said the Lt. Col.'s missive, "We remain committed to our friends and allies in the region and to countering Al Qaeda-inspired extremism where it manifests itself, but one of our goals is to lessen our presence over time. We didn’t feel that the term 'Long War' captured this nuance." You think?

I termed the White House's reaction as likely "disconcerting," because the Lt. Col.'s email in effect endorses the Democratic position on the Iraq war, does it not? To label as unhelpful any language that sanctions the current level of operations in the foreseeable future is unhelpful to the White House in itself; and to lessen our presence to the point of merely countering Al Qaeda-inspired extremism where it manifests itself is virtually right out of a page from any conceivable, 2008 Democratic platform.

Which is why, I gather, an unnamed, "long war" advocate at the White House responded to the email's content rather testily, saying "this is a generational war, and we are going to be in it a long time. Nobody I have heard around here is talking about dropping it."

Ouch. I hope Lt. Col. McLaughlin aspires not to Full Bird McLaughlin, because the administration's responding comment was, let us say, less than receptive.

But I have every confidence the "long war" skirmishing will be short lived; that the White House and Central Command will come to some sort of mutual marketing accommodation. Because you just can't fight an unsupportable war without a rousingly supported slogan.

Comments

[Rarl Kove]

The "Mission Accomplished" War?
The "Bring Em On" War?
The "Stand Up, Stand Down" War?
The 3-Way Civil War?
The War to Begin All Wars War?

[ThomasMc]

America's Last War?

[CV]

The war OF terrrrrrrrrr?
The New Crusades?
The Hubris War?
The Catastrophe?
Bush's Blunder?
The Goddanmed disaster?
War Crimes.

[Helen Rainier]

Bush's War Follies <-- my suggestion

[CV]

Operation
Iraqi
Liberation

[Dr. Zorba]

Psst... Listen up, I have a secret to share with you: There is no "war." Never was. Gore Vidal told us this 4 years ago in his pamphlet, "Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace."

The Iraq invasion and occupation was a marketing ploy invented for the 2004 elections. The objective was the retention (hopefully in perpetuity if Karl Rove can avoid prison) of Christofascism's command and control of the US government.