Operation Spin This

by Clark Elder Morrow

Back in the old days (the 1940s), when warfare was thought of as something rather imposing and inspiring, the code names given to military operations reflected the fact that war was also considered a fierce, competitive, and youthful enterprise. If Hollywood had "faces" back then, the military — when it came to their World War II exploits — had great names: Operation Torch, for example, or Operation Overlord. Overlord. Now there's a name a band of brothers engaged in life-or-death activities could be proud of.

Today, we have an entirely different brace of sensibilities at work. Today the PR specialist has set his chilling and eviscerating hand upon the Department of Defense, and the "nominative" results have been disastrous. Today, we are subjected to Operations the names of which are (what the British call) "shy-making": embarrassing, mawkish, mildly shameful, hopelessly wrongheaded. One's silly self-humiliating uncle — the one who sets everyone squirming and groaning with his appalling blend of sentimentality and cornball humor at every family gathering — he is shy-making. And so are code names like Operation Enduring Freedom.

Are we, I wonder, sufficiently alive to the precipitous plummet (stylistically speaking) from Operation Overlord to Operation Enduring Freedom? Do we feel, as we should, the ghastly gulf that separates the two appellations? And do we abhor enough the degradation that marks off the latter from the former?

Consider a few examples. In 1941, the British launched an operation in southern Italy code-named Colossus. By contrast, one expects every day now to hear from the Pentagon that the United States has initiated something called Operation Kumbaya. In World War II, you could thrill to the sound of Operation Galahad, or Operation Mailfist, or Operation Firebrand. In our day and age, some mealy-mouthed nonentity from the Defense Department shuffles around behind the microphones and mutters bureaucratically that his colleagues are instigating Operation We Are The World.

Even the humorous names used in the past had more of genuine pluck and nerve and wink-at-the-enemy bravura than anything the sappy feel-good monikers of our own time can muster. The country that produced the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields and H. L. Mencken could also boast of Operation Bunghole, and Operation Pigstick, and Operation Toenails (real names, by the way). Compare and contrast those with Operation Offend No-One (which I fully expect to hear about soon), and once again you see how debased the Name Game has become.

Give me the likes of Operation Buccaneer, or Fortitude, or Battleaxe. Those were names that recognized the fact that war was — not only hell — but heroic as well; that the potential for dash and swashbuckle remained in modern combat, and that if you were going to undertake a massive amount of bloodletting in a good cause you could at least grace the attempt with a name worthy of the purpose.

Even as late as Vietnam you had Operations like Flaming Dart, Kingfisher, and Rolling Thunder (though note that already — in the mid-1960s — the lamentable tendency toward two-word code names is emerging: this is the first ill omen of later chatty monstrosities like Operation Restore Freedom, and Reinstate Niceness, and Let's Behave.

Somewhere between Korea and the Gulf War of 1991, the military lost sight of the fact that code names are supposed to be short, colorful, memorable tags, designed to allow warriors the freedom to discuss secret plans and ops in an air of treehouse mystery, without giving the game away. Nowadays, when practically every movement of American troops is laid out naked beneath the glaring sun of the international press, the code name has lost its purpose, and survives vestigially as an opportunity for the suits at Foggy Bottom to slip in a little ham-fisted spin control.

Yet it behooves these fighting eagles in bowties to remember: when it comes to slapping snappy labels on military projects, it is best to stick with a Boy Scout–sports team mentality. In other words, use the kinds of names you would use for brand-new football clubs (minus anything of a politically incorrect nature, of course — no sense telling the press that you've just launched Operation Speedy Gonzalez if you can avoid it). Stick to large wild animals, ancient weapons, and — if you feel the need — funny catch phrases like Nosejob, or Betty Boop, or the like. Even something as childish as Operation Kickbutt partakes of a certain boyish braggadocio that is infinitely preferable to the namby-pambyism of code names seemingly escaped from Soccer Mom Association press releases. It is simply wrong to try to squeeze a socially conscious and sensitive mission statement into the code name of your latest attempt to blunderbuss the barbarians.

There are signs of hope. One of the latest undertakings in the war in Afghanistan was code-named Operation Anaconda. That is a magnificent reversion to the glory days of Dragon Teeth, and Hangman, and Crossbow, and Brimstone. Those were names, and I for one cultivate a strong wish that we never again succumb to the temptation (and temptation it is for some people) to call a crucial portion of our war on terrorism something along the lines of Operation Please Don't Dislike Us. It would be so ... shy-making.