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The most recent military operation in Iraq, designed as a reprisal to the escalating number and sophistication of the guerilla attacks in a reportedly pacified territory, has been given the operational code name, “Iron Hammer.” This may be a fitting name. So far, it does appear to be a blunt and rather clumsy instrument being used in a situation where precision is required. Nothing new there.
My question is why we have a proper military code name for this operation? (It certainly lacks the grandeur of “Overlord,” but that’s to be expected...) By contrast, the name of the operation while we were actually at war was the clumsy “Iraqi Freedom,” which appears to have been the best that the spin doctors of the Bush administration could come up with to convince the American public that we were doing “good work.”
The ironic thing is that somehow, the two do work together. Since the Iraqis don’t seem too keen to accept the kind of freedom that Dubya’s selling, we now will move to beat them into submission. It’s for their own good, after all.
