{"id":8419,"date":"2011-03-23T12:44:56","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T16:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=8419"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:05:46","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:05:46","slug":"naming-conventions-military-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/03\/23\/naming-conventions-military-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Naming conventions, military style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon sent me this link<\/a> on the highly inappropriate name given to the military actions against Libya:<\/p>\n

\n

As Jonah Goldberg wrote, the name approved by Barack Obama, Odyssey Dawn, sends a slightly different message than perhaps intended:<\/p>\n

Odyssey, after all, is a term for a very long and involved adventure. If memory serves, Odysseus took a very long time to come home. Maybe it\u2019s just a coincidence that the Pentagon came up with a label that basically says this is beginning of an extended, seemingly endless, journey.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had the exact same thought — and shouldn\u2019t a man with a classical Ivy League education have caught that reference? Even if Obama was not familiar with The Odyssey<\/em>, the dictionary definition of \u201codyssey\u201d should have raised a red flag:<\/p>\n

Definition of ODYSSEY<\/strong>
1: a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune<\/p>\n

For a mission that is supposed to be counted in \u201cdays, not weeks,\u201d it looks like Obama\u2019s choice of mission names is an epic<\/em> failure.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d written, quite some time back<\/a>, about the national differences in how Anglosphere nations named their military operations:<\/p>\n

\n

I often note with amusement the significant differences in naming conventions for military operations between the US and the rest of the “Anglosphere”. A typical US Army operation might be “Operation Devastating Earthshatterer”, while a British or Canadian equivalent might be “Operation Broken Teaspoon” or “Operation Goalie Glove”. (I’ll pass up on the urge to attribute something mockery-tinged to French codenames . . . but only because Babelfish didn’t give me a useful translation for “Operation Wet Knickers” or “Operation Big Girl’s Blouse”).<\/p>\n

Not that there’s anything wrong with a dose of belligerant overkill in your naming conventions. . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How quickly things change: the former “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” have become the leaders of the military coalition, while the Americans were on the verge of transforming into “burger-eating surrender monkeys”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon sent me this link on the highly inappropriate name given to the military actions against Libya: As Jonah Goldberg wrote, the name approved by Barack Obama, Odyssey Dawn, sends a slightly different message than perhaps intended: Odyssey, after all, is a term for a very long and involved adventure. If memory serves, Odysseus took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,1117,5,13],"tags":[145,158,30],"class_list":["post-8419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-france","category-military","category-usa","tag-airforce","tag-barackobama","tag-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2bN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8420,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8419\/revisions\/8420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}