On the importance of naming... and a reminder about war

Stephen Green, the Vodkapundit, has a good ice-breaker post (what other kind for the Vodkapundit, eh?) up at Pajamas Media, called "One of these things is not like the other."

It starts out with a discussion on the naming of military operations, and then moved on to the name of the offensive in Afghanistan -

Husky.

Torch.

Anvil.

Overlord.

Olympic.

Linebacker.

Reforger.

Rolling Thunder.

These are the names we used to give our military operations. Forceful names. Decisive names. Military names. OK, so Operation Olympic got called off — but only because we’d already nuked the crap out of a couple Japanese cities. After that, an actual invasion just seemed so over the top.

So now comes word that US Marines (and our Afghan allies) are finding the fight unexpectedly tough in Marjah. One report even says they’re “bogged down.”

The name of the operation: “Togetherness.”

‘Nuff said.

Being a pedant of the first order, I couldn't let this one go unchallenged...  adding in a comment a historically nitpicky correction of sorts:

Actually, REFORGER was the acronym that covered the movement of forces to and from Germany… REturn of FORces to GERmany, in order to conduct exercises, such as “Atlantic Lion”, etc.

I then moved on to different aspects of the issue, and the ones which concern me rather more as this operation goes forward in Afghanistan - how it's going to be conducted, and how that in turn will get reported, and how we, on this side of the big lakes, will react.

One man’s “bogged down” is another man’s “I can’t just blow everything away like I did in WWII and Korea so I find that I have to take my time. Oh, and yeah, the Talibs didn’t sign the landmine treaty and the place is lousy with them, and they're covering their obstacles with fires.”

The piece from the Times Online opens with:  "US Marines and Afghan troops were bogged down by sniper fire and home-made bombs on the third day of their biggest offensive since the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001."

I submit it would be just as accurate to say: "US Marines and Afghan troops moved methodically through sniper fire and home-made bombs on the third day of their biggest offensive since the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001."   Sets a whole different tone, doesn't it?

The Talibs can fight, and they are putting one up.  Which only comes as a surprise to people of stunning  ignorance or a certain stultifying cultural smugness that engages in the bigotry of low expectations.

I'm thinking that as long as we keep our nose to the grindstone and don’t fret every time something doesn’t go just perfectly, we’ll find that we’ve ground them to dust in a place they have chosen to put up a fight.

A certain military maxim comes to mind: "No plan ever survives contact with the enemy."

Because the enemy gets a vote.  And like the knuckledragging ignorant American electorate, it doesn't always vote the way the elites expect...   Sorry, couldn't resist.

I also rather suspect the name of the operation wasn’t chosen in a late-night skull session between the President and Rahm Emanuel, but reflects the political realities of the war as we have to fight it.  In Iraq we've had Operation Salam (peace) and Operation Glad Tidings of Benevolence...  and there have been plenty of properly militant-sounding operations (along with some not so much so) in Afghanistan as well.

I.e, see above – we are not conducting this war as an existential fight for us, but it *is* being conducted as an existential fight by them.

Yeah, it was just simpler when we could just nuke stuff and move the rubble piles around and those civilian bodies were an unfortunate byproduct of the need to completely break the will of the people supporting the governments we were fighting.  Too bad that’s not the war we’re fighting. Nor should it be, however much we might like it to be, because gosh, golly gee, it sure would be simpler. And I mean that, because here... the people are a center of gravity we're trying to get and hold, not break.  And that's another reason for the fluffy bunny name people are mocking.  The target audience for that name is not the US troops, who can fire up their warfighting morale just fine as Stephen observed in his response to my comment - which pointed us to Austin Bay at Strategy Page which opens thusly:

"NATO's Afghan offensive began with an advertising blitz."  and continued with this:

News of NATO’s impending attack in Helmand province permeated regional and international mass media.

The sales pitch, however, was even more comprehensive and explicitly targeted. T-shirts and legendary U.S. Marine bravado played a role. For weeks Marines sported T-shirts that read, “Just do Marja,” the town of Marja being a major position held by Taliban forces.

If you don’t think the T-shirts and swagger spurred local rumor and gossip — which are important channels of communication in every culture, but especially in a society where literacy is rare — then you don’t understand the power of swagger and the pan-human effectiveness of word of mouth promotion.
 

The name was intended as branding for the target audience, of which, oddly enough, we are not the primary segment...

I am actually more concerned about the reporting on the fight.  "Bogged down" has, to me, a clearly negative connotation, and is wrapped around expectations of a fast end to the fighting.

There could be a much faster end to the fighting, if we'd just let slip the dogs of war and used our usual response to stubborn people - the application of large amounts of high explosive.  Of course, we'd then lose the war, in the way that the press was reporting the anonymous American officer during Vietnam "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."  Given the reaction to the missile that killed twelve civilians, was it going to go any other way?  No - the rules of engagement are strict, restrain us in ways our opponents are not constrained, and we will therefore have to be very methodical and very patient as we conduct the hardest of infantry operations - house-to-house combat against an entrenched and embedded enemy who is using the civilians who were unable to escape as human shields, because he knows we will move heaven and earth not to kill them - and will in fact die to protect them, if needed. 

If we have the political will to see this fight through - we will, in the end, grind the Taliban to dust in Marjah, and kill and capture a lot of them doing it.  And, likely, will do so with surprisingly few overall fatal casualties compared against historical norms for this type of combat.  And the Coalition will make a powerful and important statement to the Afghans, and the Afghan armed forces will have been significant players in the drama.  Which is all part of what General McChrystal intends.

Of course, it is still, in the end, up to the Afghans to decide to make it work.