I suggested in an earlier posting that the Obama administration’s change of nomenclature for the Global War on Terrorism is less important than its willingness to continue most of the actions the Bush administration took to fight the terrorists. But there is no doubt that words do matter and the banishment of “GWOT” isn’t sitting well with many people who have risked their necks to fight on our behalf. The following is an email from an Army officer who has served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. It was posted on the Warlord Loop, a discussion forum to which I belong. I received the contributor’s permission to share it more broadly:

GWOT and Long War are now officially dead. Overseas Contingency Operations is the new buzzword. This means you now earn an OCO tour award, right? Are we now OCO vets instead of Afghanistan or Iraq Vets?

Check this out:

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary lists the following definition:

con*tin*gen*cy
Date: 1561
1: the quality or state of being contingent.

2: a contingent event or condition: as a: an event (as an emergency) that may but is not certain to occur <trying to provide for every contingency> b: something liable to happen as an adjunct to or result of something else synonyms see juncture

So I had go look up contingent and found this:

con*tin*gent
Date: 14th century
1: likely but not certain to happen : possible.

2: not logically necessary ; especially : empirical.

3 a: happening by chance or unforeseen causes b: subject to chance or unseen effects : unpredictable c: intended for use in circumstances not completely foreseen.

4: dependent on or conditioned by something else <payment is contingent on fulfillment of certain conditions>

5: not necessitated : determined by free choice synonyms see accidental -
con*tin*gent*ly adverb

So as I understand it 4,926 service people have died as of 10am today and the new definition for this whole thing now falls in with; not logically necessary, happening by chance, not necessitated, and determined by free choice.  WTF over!?!

I guess if the Kool-Aid tastes bad, you just keep adding sugar.  Somebody sitting at a desk thinking this stuff up ought to be drug into the hall and beaten with a telephone book.  Maybe we could just call it a partial, semi-static, war of distraction.

Sincerely,

The mentally disturbed.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 4:22 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.