Friday, March 19, 2004
OIF/TELIC ONE YEAR ON Well, it's roughly a year ago now that Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Telic began to bring the Gulf War to its final end by removing the regime of Saddam Hussein. So for the next week or so I'm going to do specials by focussing on different aspects to the Iraq business everyday. After that blogging will not only resume to normal, but with a bit of luck, with most of my workload out of the way, I will finally be able to put the effort into blogging that I want to. In effect that means that I will actually have some postings on architecture and other cultural issues as my headline has emptily promised for half a year now.
On a different note, what's that with the name for military operations these days? I mean Operation Enduring Freedom as a counter-terrorist operation is just about tolerable, but Operation Iraq Freedom, for an operation that was chiefly designed to send out the message that you shouldn't mess about with us? But our bit to it is even more risible: Operation Telic. What does that mean? Does that mean anything? What’s a telic? Or perhaps somebody sternly warned the Defence Staff that they had to choose a title that wasn't culturally insensitive, such as the Western-hegemonic concept of "freedom", and they simply made the word up. I know I don’t have a file with catchy military operations titles, but just off the top of my head I can come up with: Desert Avenger, Desert Fury, Swift Sabre, etc., all of which would have been better than Telic.
Anyhows, as a general opening to the look-back I'd recommend Timothy Garton Ash's call for Western unity and Martin Woollacott's explanation why we will remain involved in the Middle East for a long time to come.
On a different note, what's that with the name for military operations these days? I mean Operation Enduring Freedom as a counter-terrorist operation is just about tolerable, but Operation Iraq Freedom, for an operation that was chiefly designed to send out the message that you shouldn't mess about with us? But our bit to it is even more risible: Operation Telic. What does that mean? Does that mean anything? What’s a telic? Or perhaps somebody sternly warned the Defence Staff that they had to choose a title that wasn't culturally insensitive, such as the Western-hegemonic concept of "freedom", and they simply made the word up. I know I don’t have a file with catchy military operations titles, but just off the top of my head I can come up with: Desert Avenger, Desert Fury, Swift Sabre, etc., all of which would have been better than Telic.
Anyhows, as a general opening to the look-back I'd recommend Timothy Garton Ash's call for Western unity and Martin Woollacott's explanation why we will remain involved in the Middle East for a long time to come.
