The Power of Words, Part 3
In 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the introduction of the "Inter-Service Code Word Index."
The most important operations were assigned names only after careful scrutiny.
A significant role in approving names and the principles of this work was played by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; he greatly enjoyed coming up with names himself.
Churchill believed that operations in which many people could die should not bear proud and "overconfident" names; they should not evoke despondency or undermine dignity.
"What mother would be pleased to learn that her son died in an operation called 'Nonsense?'"
It is necessary to avoid entirely ordinary words used in everyday speech, as well as names of people currently living," wrote the British Prime Minister. However, the names of these operations were declassified only after their completion and did not reach the public.
Concerns about the importance of public perception and "winning the hearts and minds" of citizens in the United States arose after 1945.
During the Korean War, General MacArthur allowed the declassification of operation names immediately after their commencement, rather than waiting for the end of the war. However, initially, this strategy worked more against the armed forces and their image.
Names like "Operation 'Killer' (Korean War) or 'Masher' (Vietnam War) generated a flurry of criticism and outright ridicule from the press. In particular, following a scandal in the White House, "Masher" had to be hastily renamed to "White Wing."
In 1975, an automated system for updating and coordinating terms, code meanings, and code names – NICKA – was launched.
The names of operations created by this system remained random and neutral until the late 1980s, such as "Operation El Dorado Canyon" (an airstrike on Libya in 1986) and "Operation Praying Mantis" (a strike on Iranian oil platforms in 1988).
The turning point came in 1989 when the U.S. military was preparing for an invasion of Panama. NICKA proposed the neutral name "Blue Spoon," which sparked protest from Special Operations Commander James Lindsey, who found the name absurd. He shared his concerns with General Thomas Kelly, who had a bachelor's degree in journalism and understood the importance of words in the information world.
It was Kelly who suggested the name "Just Cause," which subtly worked to create a positive image, so despite the controversy surrounding the Panama operation, critics' objections had little effect.
Military personnel especially liked the name and even humorously referred to the operation as "Just Because."
After the Panama invasion, operation names began to be chosen with consideration for the experience of private businesses introducing a new product to the market.
The Pentagon established a special office that calculated the possible public reaction, international perceptions, and various cultural connotations. As a result, the U.S. military's mission in Somalia in 1993 was named "Restore Hope," the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was called "Iraqi Freedom," and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was dubbed "Enduring Freedom."
Today, names for American operations are chosen according to specific rules, primarily considering the media-manipulative aspect.
First, the name should convey a sense of righteousness, containing words related to universally approved values with positive connotations, such as "freedom," "hope," "justice," "law," and so on.
Second, it should emphasize the character or location of the actions. For example, the removal of chemical weapons from Germany was named "Steel Box," which, according to its creators, demonstrated the reliability and airtightness of the containers for transporting weapons. "Desert Storm" (Iraq, 1988) highlighted both the aggressive nature of the attack and the location of the military operation.
Third, the name should be well-received by the American and international public, as well as the population of the invaded country.
For example, the mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 was initially planned to be named "Infinity Justice." However, experts realized in time that entering a Muslim region, where justice is believed to be the sole prerogative of Allah, would be offensive to the local population.
It is true that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan did turn out to be almost endless, spanning 20 years and tragically concluding in 2021.
Regardless, the U.S. Department of Defense has long recognized the importance of building the communication they need with the population and the media. In today's warfare, having a strong military alone is insufficient; one must leave not only the battlefield but also public opinion on their side.
Playing with the names of military operations is just a small part of the process that American linguists call "the taboo on the unpleasant." The number of euphemisms in modern English, and subsequently in other languages, adopted for the sake of political correctness and the desire not to offend anyone, is staggering.
These words create a new reality, blur and expand the boundaries of social norms. For example, "prostitution" becomes "sex services," "capitalism" turns into "market economy," "mental illness" becomes "mental disorder," and so on.
This phenomenon gives rise to what the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (460 BC - 400 BC) called "the corruption of language," where words begin to denote the direct opposite of what they mean.
Different political and economic forces often use the same word in completely different meanings.
In the example of the names of American military operations mentioned above, you can see this distortion: an invasion of a peaceful country living by its own laws is suddenly declared as "Freedom for Iraq." From this name, the general public only understands that the USA is bringing freedom, but whether there was freedom where American military is headed is no longer of interest, and what meaning is attributed to this very freedom is unclear.
One of the most effective manipulative techniques is the use of hypostatization - a logical error in which abstract entities are "objectified," and they are attributed independent existence. For example, considering that "justice" or "equality" exist in the same way as people bound by such relationships, or that "illness" and "health" are also independent entities.
Hypostatization is based on ignoring the qualitative difference between objects (individuals) capable of independent existence in space and time, and their attributes that exist only as part of the objects.
In the manipulation of consciousness, hypostatization is used to undermine the ability to reflect, analyze decisions, and their consequences.
To achieve this, concepts-substitutes are created, replacing the substantive description of entities such as "European house," "barracks socialism," "deficit," and so on.
The manipulation of consciousness through hypostatization is based on the manipulator using these abstract entities as something that requires no explanation. The manipulated individual doesn't need an explanation of what is specifically meant or what the discussion is about; the concepts are established in their consciousness as if they actually exist.
For example, the practice of erroneously asserting "consumer rights" is widespread. Residents of a building with, let's say, a non-functional elevator or poor garbage collection stop paying utility bills because they believe their rights as property owners are being violated. However, since the legislation does not consider such a form of protest legitimate, the property owner accumulates debts for maintenance fees and risks eviction.
In this case, the property owner sees their right as something with independent existence, but without legal backing to refuse payment for services not provided, it is merely the fantasy of the non-paying property owner.
To avoid such illusions, it is important to subject one's own "beautiful ideas" about the organization of the world to doubt and be guided not by them, but by real knowledge of the laws and structure of society.
The principle of hypostatization is also the basis for the slogans of many global protest campaigns in which concepts like "racism," "war," "environmental pollution," and "domestic violence" are presented as independent entities, despite the importance of the problems associated with them.
Few people consider war, racism, domestic violence, or environmental pollution as goods in themselves. However, in the absence of specific definitions of these concepts – such as war against whom? the boundaries of interpreting the words "racism" and "domestic violence"; how and what exactly pollutes the environment and what real methods exist to minimize the damage – people get entangled in the struggle with the very concept. This consumes their emotional energy and time, allowing manipulators to pursue their own power or financial interests.
In this sense, the history of the international environmental organization Greenpeace is illustrative. Greenpeace, famous for its radical actions, including inflatable boat attacks on ships believed to be causing irreparable harm to the environment, had even disappointed its founders by the 1990s despite operating on private donations since 1971.
"Greenpeace – information terrorists," according to Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of the organization. "They deliberately exaggerate and play on people's fears. Their campaigns are based on fabrications; they are just fooling people."
According to another Greenpeace co-founder, Paul Watson, who, like Moore, served on the organization's board of directors for many years, Greenpeace has long been taken over by bureaucrats and financiers who collect multi-million-dollar donations supposedly to address serious environmental issues but in reality are used to sustain a massive bureaucratic apparatus.
Watson is convinced that Greenpeace is only pretending to solve certain problems, for example, collecting around $30 million annually to combat whaling in Antarctica, but the situation doesn't change, and the organization's representatives are only managing budgets and attracting new funds, capitalizing on people's natural sympathy for dying animals and the modern human concern for ecological issues.
Both Patrick Moore and Paul Watson are of the opinion that Greenpeace has long turned into a lobbying structure. However, it's possible that Canadian entrepreneur David McTaggart conceived it as an instrument of corporate warfare.
In any case, most eco-activists who were at the organization's origins have long been disillusioned and have left it.
Yet, Greenpeace continues its work, inventing new scares for humanity. Currently, genetically modified products and their harm to the health of current and future generations are under their scrutiny.
In general, hypostatization can be described as the amusing phrase from the early 2010s, "the fight for everything good against everything bad."
However, despite its cleverness, it itself can be quite manipulative, as elaborated further.
