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Literary Review
The words of war - III
THE last gulf war generated enough war-related euphemisms and acronyms to begin the study of what may be called military linguistics. The new branch could study the psychology behind calling a conflict a "war" (to rationalise use of excessive force and massive bombing?), and thinking up shortened words (Centcom) and timesaving acronyms ("moab"). It would also be interesting to see how U.S. military's Pentagon-speak or Pentagonese, a jargon, evolves into an idiom that may be termed Pentagonism. My theory is that such words are invented by bored military planners and soldiers waiting to go kinetic (read below for explanation).
One British expression to denote the supposed beginning of an event borrowed by the Americans came up in a statement by a U.S. administrator that his department would work well with the Coast Guard under a Department of Homeland Security, just as it had "when the balloon went up for the gulf war."
This expression, dating back to WWI, is attributed to British artillerymen who hoisted a balloon to notify gunners along the line to begin firing. A visual signal was quicker than sending a rider down the line and more reliable than the early field telephones (no mobile phones then). But then, it could have also come from launching an observation balloon to get a final look at the enemy positions (before the time of satellite surveillance), or from barrage balloons floated to catch enemy aircraft in hanging wires (no SAMs either). Take your pick.
The weapon of choice in the waging of psychological warfare is euphemism. Ordinance, meaning "order; directive; religious rite" later became ordnance, meaning "heavy weaponry of warfare, and services dealing with military stores and materials". Ordnance for bombs and rockets and napalm seems less harsh or direct. Colin Powell, the American secretary of state and once the US top soldier, said during Gulf War I, "The aircraft got to its target, delivered its ordnance, and returned." Once released, euphemising knew no bounds, soon finding its level in "contingent ordnance" dropped on secondary targets, and in "incontingent ordnance" that landed where it should not.
Fresher euphemisms this time had "soft targeting" for the dropping of leaflets asking the Iraqi Republican Guards to surrender, and radio stations broadcasting anti-Saddam propaganda. "Kinetic targeting" meant aircraft and missiles destroying targets on ground. When the coalition forces finally went in, they had permission to "go kinetic". And "friendly fire" was clearly invented to cover the embarrassment of firing on wrong people or targets.
World War II acronyms such as radar and sonar perhaps are not seen as acronyms any more. Snafu (situation normal, all fouled up) is said to have meant "situation normal, all f***ed up"; if you don't know what the asterisks mean, you don't need to know. Complex electronically guided missiles need acronyms: TOW (tube-launched optically-traced wire-guided); SLAM (standoff land attack missile); the Gulf War I Iraqi FROG stood for "free rocket over ground". Scud (meaning, to move or run swiftly), incidentally, is not an acronym, but a NATO code word for the Russian missile.
Gulf War II introduced countless shortened words (Centcom for Central Command) and acronyms (AO for area of operations);only a few stood out. The 9-tonne "moab" technically stands for "massive ordnance air blast" but almost everyone says that it is the "mother of all bombs".
Some more past military words that have turned civilian. Wardrobe came from Old French warderobe, a place to store and guard (ward) robe (valuables) looted from the enemy. When my schoolteacher sent home the note saying, "Unless your ward stops looking down my blouse, he will be expelled from school", she meant the person my parents guarded (looked after, took care of) or were guardians of. And robe (from rob) took a meandering route to its present meaning (a garment) from its original meaning "`booty". In WW I, "a basket case" referred to a soldier missing all limbs or seriously wounded who would be carried off the battlefield in a basket. And soldiers' bunkers came from the Scottish bonker, a chest or a box.
William Safire, the noted language writer, described his close brush with an acronym; a half-acronym, to be precise. Safire was reading a report about the investigation into a case of "friendly fire" where U.S. aircrafts dropped a laser-guided 500-pound bomb, killing four Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, when he came upon the following quote:
"Hold fire," radioed an Airborne Warning and Control Systems (Awacs) aircraft, "need more details on Safire... ." It turned out that Safire's last name was an acronym with three uses. One was Shipboard Airborne Forward-looking Infra-Red Equipment. Another was Spectroscopy of the Atmosphere using Far Infra-Red Emission. The half-acronym that was part of the radio message, however, was "Surface-to-Air Fire", as used in "need more details on Safire".
Safire said, "It's an acronym that I'd just as soon see fade away." It is not difficult to see why.
anand@journalist.com
ANAND
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