Every war breeds its own vocabulary, and the second Persian Gulf conflict has proved no exception. One thing does seem new, though. As this invasion (aka liberation) plays out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the world's living rooms, its singular lingo has circled the globe with unprecedented speed. A month ago, how many of us could have decoded A-Day, G-Day or S-Day or knew that MOAB referred to the world's biggest conventional bomb rather than a history-rich bit of the Middle East? And while most of it won't enter the language permanently -- only the famous "mother of all battles" seems to have survived from the first Persian Gulf War -- there is no denying its reach. For now, at least, we are all experts in the terminology of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Yet the new buzzwords aren't all alike. As the cliches and acronyms and code words rain down, it's an interesting exercise to sift through them, sorting military jargon from media waffle and both of them from political euphemism. Those alphabet-soup days, for instance, are a classic instance of military idiom, chosen in homage to D-Day, June 6, 1944, the date the Allies landed in Normandy to liberate Europe from the Nazis. In this war, A-Day designates the introduction of air forces; G-Day stands for the introduction of ground forces; and S-Day, more obscurely, signals the unleashing of special-operations forces. If the language seems abrasively tough and clinical to those who oppose the war, one can only point out that it is in the nature of military operations to be tough and clinical. This invasion, no matter how many people disapprove of it, is no different from any other in that respect.
The same goes for the nearly 10,000-kg MOAB, the "massive ordnance air blast" (or "mother of all bombs") that the United States unveiled in January; for the "psy-ops," or psychological operations, that are of unusual importance in this notably unprovoked war; for "CENTCOM," the U.S. Central Command that we keep hearing about; and even for the unfortunate Iraqi "elements," otherwise known as troops, that the U.S. military kept running across in the desert last week. None of this language is sinister; it is merely the way soldiers talk.