Reply #14: The Marketeers are at it again, "Re-brand" the war to make it more popular [View All]

[happyslug]

Clausewitz defined war "As the use of Force to force someone to do out will". Now he did this after several pages of thought as to what was "War", but he said it was a poor definition, but the only one he could come up with that takes in ALL the different types of war (including raids, blockades, the THREAT of other actions etc.). He even mention the horrors of war (death and destruction) but then while acknowledging such horrors, point out some military actions, minimized such horrors while other maximize them. Thus Vietnam was a "War", our embargo of Cuba is a "War" Vietnam and Korea were "Wars", what the US did in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s was "War" (as is what the US is doing in Columbia and Iraq today).

The problem is this War is unpopular, It is a "War" but something has to be done to make it more popular. Marketeers when facing such a problem on a consumer product try to "re-brand" such bad products by giving it a new image. Sometimes this requires a new name and packaging, thus the search for a "Czar" for the "War" and now this attempt to re-brand Iraq into something new. The term "Police Action" would be they first choice, but that term was used in Vietnam. The term has to be that shows the US is still trying to achieve its aims through the use of Force, but avoid the use of the term "War" or any term with "negative" connotations like "Force". Liberation is a another term to be avoid given its use in the first weeks of the war in the form of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" Which reduced to abbreviations become O.I.L. The war then became "Operation Iraqi Freedom". "Operation" is another term they want to avoid for it si to militaristic given its use in Desert Strom and other military operations.

Thus the search for a new name, to make the war in Iraq sound better.