WANTED: Sergeants with Literary Backgrounds
Prof. Volokh points to a Slate article bemoaning the fact that while we caught Saddam, the mission name used refers to a bad cold war flick: Red Dawn.
Volokh puts the mission name down to fondness for bad war flicks in the U.S. military, rather than any kind of overt propaganda effort. While I agree the military probably didn't have any hidden agenda in choosing the name, I suggest an alternative reason: it took so damn long to catch Saddam that the men responsible started running out of names:
"OK, we've got the targets narrowed down, we assigned units... oh hell, we need to name this thing before the brief. Your turn.""What do you mean my turn? I got the last one."
"Bullshit. Remember, the last one was Operation Anna Karenina. You told me I couldn't name any until I got off my Russian literature kick."
"Hmm... oh yeah, you're right. We've got most of the animal ones out of the way, and there's only so many combinations of claw, red, talon, strike, and freedom we can manage. What other categories do we have left?"
"Well, let's see, we got through all the pre-Raphs... wait, did we get Elizabeth Siddal?"
"Yep. Kind of glad that one didn't go through."
"Oh hell. Let's see, we can't use presidential names... we've done great masters... jazz singers?"
"Nah. We've assigned Bob Cole on this one, and we had Charlie Coltrane on the last one. How about painting techniques?"
"Saddam could get away before anyone remembers how to pronounce chiaroscuro."
"Point. Look, how about bad 80's movies?"
OK, probably not exactly how it was, but I imagine the process at Chatterbox Editorial in trying to find a 'hook' (how to spin the best piece of good news in ages as a bad thing) to have been roughly similar.
Comments
Posted by: rustymonk | December 16, 2003 6:26 PM