The language of (the Iraq) war

Rudd also cautioned us to keep in mind the Australians still in Iraq, providing assistance to our “ongoing civilian mission”. While “Operation Catalyst” will now be filed under “past operations” on the DoD website, there are still two listed under “current operations”.

There is “Operation Kruger”, about 80 staff protecting the Australian embassy. Was this one named after the president of the Transvaal 1883-1900 (Stephanus Johannes Paulus)? Or the American conceptual artist (Barbara)? Or Queensland’s opening batsman (Nick)?

The second operation, named “Operation Riverbank”, consists of a total of two - yes two! - Australians, assisting the United Nations “mission” in Iraq. I would have thought there is a quite a task ahead of the UN in Iraq, and that Australia might have considered “staying the course”.

Who gets to choose the operation names? Does the DoD have a brainstorm, with butcher’s paper? The original name given to the United States “operation” was “Operation Iraqi Liberation” - apparently changed to Operation Iraq Freedom when it was realised the acronym of the original was O.I.L.

The name of the Australian “operation” with which we invaded Iraq was “Falconer”. Quite what the word for “a person who trains hawks for hunting” had to do with our part in the invasion of Iraq is beyond me.

But it is not the name of the operation itself that matters. It is the bestowing of the term “operation” itself that is crucial. It creates the veneer of strategic organisation, and implies that what is being done by a nation’s military is carefully planned, purposeful, rational and predictable. The Iraq invasion was, of course, none of these things.

And there is a whole species of grammar around “operations” that helps military institutions dominate the modes of reporting war. For instance, here is ADF spokesman, Mike Hannan, reporting on March 21, 2003, that Australian troops had invaded Iraq: “our Special Forces Task Group has transitioned from the battle preparation phase we briefed in detail yesterday and is now undertaking active operations inside Iraq”.

Journalists appear to love this kind of talk. The ABC correspondent stationed at the US CentCom press briefing centre in Qatar reported on day 1 of the invasion, with breathless excitement, that Australia had “given this operation a code name all of its own. It’s ‘Operation Falconer’”. Imagine, a codename all of our own!

Al Gore wrote in his 2007 book Assault on Reason, that most people now agree the invasion of Iraq was a “grievous mistake”. He quotes a former head of the American National Security Agency, who believes it will turn out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in US history”.

The Iraq debacle was not a technological failure. It was a conceptual one. The invasion of Iraq was viable precisely because of the kind of infantilising talk exemplified so beautifully in Rudd’s speech.

With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersch), the media reported without question or analysis the official talk that talked up the invasion. It appears they are still in this habit, as the ABC reporting of this grand parade shows. On the ABC’s 7pm news bulletin, the “conclusion” of “Operational Catalyst” did not even rate being put before the Mike Wran sex scandal.