The Neocon War.

Neocon War 1.
The Second NeoCon War.
etc.

How about:
The Neocon War to end all Neocon wars.

Ooh. I like that one.
Then it's like an homage to WW1 being
called the war to end all wars,
and this is the first neocon war, so....

I still have a preference to
The War of Mad King George

I know it's a bit of a mouthful,
but a crazy bstrd is a crzy bstrd.

The Munchausen War

With all the tall tales about WMD's, aluminum tubes for centrifuges, yellow cake from Niger, and the like, Munchausen does a good job of capturing the level of hogwash that's been thrown around to justify this war.

Or, of course,
The War of Mad King George

The reason, of course, why the current conflict seems nameless is because the Bush Administration keeps confusing it with the Global War on Terror. Or is it the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism? Or perhaps it is, believe it or not, the Long War?

In Short: The Long War

I've always been annoyed by "Gulf War 2" anyway - doesn't a decade of Iran and Iraq trying to kill each other count? It was certainly called "The Gulf War" at the time.

Or are we counting from zero?

--That's all I've got tonight folks! I'll be here all week. Tip your waitstaff and bartenders generously! Try the Veal!

As in "the piece of cod which passeth understanding"?

How about the War of American Self-Destruction? The Great Distraction?

The Showin' Up Daddy Action.

Dubya's Folly.

The Halliburton Enrichment Act.

Bush, Blair, Berlusconi...

See? 'The Codpiece War', uh, covers that too. As it were.

(Actually, I'm a stickler for the correct spelling at work, because there's a Stephen in the company, and if we end up with each other's mail or phone calls it can be messy, since he is in Germany and deals with customers.)

Stefan, it's nice to know somebody else spells "Stephen" the way I (or my parents) spell it.

Anybody else think that the President is going to keep blowing this off until someone comes up with the equivalent of the "Hey, Hey, LBJ" chant to get under his skin? Yep, I thought so...

We could call it "World War W", "World War dubious" or the "War to Reelect the President", or WREEP, as in, "as ye sow, so shall ye WREEP".

Oh, Iraq. That's just a police action, helping some friends get back in business after an enforced hiatus, a police action, that's all. Its not a war, no sirree, not a real war. After all, if it was a real war America would be winning.

They may be Mr Bush's friends, but they're certainly not ours.

How about 'The let's kill a few of ours and a lot of theirs to make sure we stay rich war'. It might not be snappy but it is descriptive.

How about 'The riverside war'. Think about it. Think about studying.

'The which war?'

I have been thinking of this one and the so-called Gulf War and the bit in Afghanistan collecitvely as "The Wars of the Bushes." Adopting that name or Mr Wright's would probably require someone to rewrite the Bard.

The Clown War.

Whatever the people in charge try to call this war, it probably won't stick, or won't stick in the ways they want it to. Likewise, the stated reasons for going to war will be long forgotten, and many of the real reasons with them. Who was Jenkins, and did he really want to be remembered purely for his ear?

Posterity has a way of getting things wrong, which makes the sort of reputation-watching Bush has been trying to do ultimately futile. (Ironically, when posterity gets it right, it's usually even worse.) I think Jimmy Carter is doing a better job of looking to his future reputation than any other President in history.

I always remember a passage from Don't Know Much About History:

Pop quiz: Who fought the French and Indian War?
Wrong.

This is not to say that the truth will not come out, and be known, but it won't be what percolates into popular culture.

(Can I just say how cool it is to see my sonnet on the front page of ML? Cool, but sad, because I can't fill the gap we all perceive.)

However I think The CodePeace War sounds like a marvelous Sci-Fi title.

starts as:

Tuttle, an accountant on an old and not very important planet named Earth is bored at his job, he daydreams all the time about being Flex SpaceCod, the silver-suited Avenger of Ganymede but the most adventurous parts of his day seems to be getting the new code files in his in-message beam and sending out the old code files in his out-message beam.

One morning he is late for work, his message beam however is not at all colorated as he had supposed, but has only one single white spot. One code in. But it is a code like none he has ever seen before, at first it looks like it has bits of corrupted Haliburton virii in the polygleams but that soon proves incorrect or at least incomplete, there are definite traces of Haliburton but with their eigen-indexii scrambled.

Sensing that there is something funny Tuttle takes an early morning break and heads down to the local diner, taking the code with him in a small beaker of insoluble codewarp. He needs to talk to Jenny the greasy-spoon cook. Jenny always has sharp advice.

(big anouncer voice) Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Coming to the Sandbox it's Gulf War 3! Let's get ready to ruummbblle!

But then, I fell down the stairs again today, so I'm feeling bleak.

Crony Conflict?

Greeted as Liberator Lie?

Can't We All Just Get Along?

"Kneel before Cod!"

It's not a pretty sight.

I like "The Bush Wars." I just hope historians won't call it "the Mesopotamian misadventure that led, some years later, to the second American Civil War, and the ultimate collapse of the United States."

Somebody had to do the Monty Python joke.

Or, y'know, Operation Little Sproing!

codpiece + sproing

I'm not sure I like where this is leading.

Xopher @48:
Well, depending on how much you're willing to stretch it, isn't that the Eucharist? But it's less the sight that scares me than the smell, after a few days. Unless it's battered and fried, ahd there are chips in neat little cardboard dishes in the pews.

Steve @49 and Serge @50:
Believe it or not, I wasn't expecting that.

Which gets me thinking. When did facial hair disappear from American politics? Are there a lot of mustachioed or bearded politicians that I'm just not seeing? I am kind of far away, and don't watch a lot of TV, but everyone seems to be clean-shaven these days.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. (Cod help me, I'm on a roll. Must. Do. Something. Else. Lest I. Reiterate. Python All day.)

Also, Steve LaTourette sports a beard and mustache.

World War III
The Seventh Crusade
The Iraqi Civil War

If they let me name it, I'd call it

The Chickenhawk Crusade

The Iraqi Oil Heist

(The linked comment references "Hey, hey, LBJ..." Try this, maybe?)

"Bush! Bush! Yer life's so cush!
How many dead kids under yer tush?"

Uhm... I can't quite believe I'm typing that here for you guys. *deep breath* Okay, if it's horrible, I'll take my lumps.

Crazy(but apparently the only sane response in a r**lity-based world)Soph

In re: beards, check out the excellent discussion of them in MacKay's great book Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Diversions and the Madness of Crowds: Chapter one, Volume Two: "Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard."

No, it's not clear from the name that the French and Indians were on the same side in that war. (My 7th grade Social Studies teacher made a big point of it though.)

(Can I just say how cool it is to see my sonnet on the front page of ML? Cool, but sad, because I can't fill the gap we all perceive.)

Congratulations. This may be a good time to impart a bit of wisdom I received from Jonathan Tunick. He's the premiere orchestrator for musical theater of our time. He's having a second career of sorts right now reorchestrating musicals for reduced forces. (Sometimes, these are musicals for which he wrote the original orchestrations.) He remarked the reason he's been successful at this is because he does not think of the job as coming up with a new orchestration which takes the place of the original, albeit with small forces. He can't do, with fewer instruments, everything the original did. He makes the new orchestration do its own things, to be a good orchestration in its own right.

It sounds obvious, but it isn't. I've heard enough reduced orchestrations to prove that.

As for naming the war, it might be worth waiting to see if this escalates into a broader regional conflict against the US. I wouldn't put it past this administration to lock future administrations into a path they can't leave.

Something in the Declaration about "throw off such governments and assigning new guards for their future secutity." I may not be exact in the wording, but you get the idea.

Hmmm....

The Indians were actually on both sides as mercenaries and partisans. One could think of that war as a three-sided conflict (British, French, Native Populations) and as the first World War (as the conflict wasn't limited to the colonies but included European, Caribbean, and I think African holdings).

It was also Geo. Washington's only major defeat where he was forced to sign a capitulation letter in French (a language he didn't know) which included a clause where he admitted to having killed the French Ambassador (whose name escapes me at the moment) which ignited the conflict to a larger scale than just a border war. The involvement of a native called Little King in this affair is especially interesting (as is his history).

Georgie, Georgie, bomb and gun,
Went to Iraq and made the blood run,
When the truth saw light of day,
Georgie, Georgie ran away.

Vietnam II?
The War of Unintended Consequences?
Halliburton's Windfall?

...PNACkered?

I appreciate the wisdom, and not just in this context. (I'm working on recasting a ballad I wrote years ago as a sonnet, and I think I need to take another cut at it in the light of that advice.)

I reference Mike Ford in writing sonnets here because he was our sonnet guy, not because I'm writing them entirely in imitation of him. This isn't my first foray into the form. I'd stopped writing them about ten years ago, after a decade or so of sporadic efforts, because I never really saw anywhere you could go with them. Reading Mike's work showed me otherwise, but also intimidated me.

When he died, I realised that if I ever wanted them to be any good, I was going to have to write more sonnets. I'm trying to get back into the pace of them, so the meter is a habit and the rhymes come easily, because it's only then that the content controls the language rather than the reverse. I have a ways to go, and I know it. It's open to question whether I have any talent in the area, but I don't think that will be detectable until I inhabit the form more comfortably.

I write things that relate here because I think a lot about what gets posted here. Some of those thoughts fall into the rhythm and the rhyme, and some of the results get stuck in the comments box. I'm conscious that that may be intrusive, and that worries me, but I reckon a stupid sonnet can be as easily ignored as foolish prose.

I mean both clauses when I say, "I am not Mike Ford, nor was meant to be." I'm conscious that, posting them here, I'm reminding people of a loss that I can't fill - I'm not him, and I'm not a part of people's lives here the way he was. But I'm not trying to become him, or write what he would have written.

Do your own thing, abi. I've never met Mike, but he probably would have been honored to be the one you want to emulate.

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I thought you were imitating him. My apologies if I've offended you.

What I meant, and what I understood Tunick to mean, was that one shouldn't worry about filling losses. It's better to focus on doing the best work one can do instead.

(I mean, I write sonnets too, but, so far, I limit them to birthday cards.)

I'm not offended. I wasn't sure whether this was - finally - the challenge to my presumption ("Hey, you can't write sonnets here! This is Mike's turf!"), or what I hoped you meant, which is what you did mean. If you see what I mean.

Shorter me @68 would be "I'm not writing to fill the gap, which may be a good thing, because I know I don't."

So when do we get to see a JC sonnet on ML?

From what I hear of his character, I think Mike would like the idea that his example has encouraged people. This doesn't mean you can blame him when the sonnets he inspires are no good...

My own thing is the only thing I can do. I learned that ten years and one nervous breakdown ago.

Exactly, abi.

The CodePeace War:

"Renowned accountant Tuttle staggered through the grungy archway of Jenny's Diner. He lunged for the nearest stool he could see..."

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It was the Code part that incited me.

abi -- I used to write a lot of sonnets -- they were my preferred form for writing about ambiguous or difficult themes, because the form demands clarity of expression. Mr. Ford's example had been prodding me to start again. Good on you for doing it.

The war:

Chimpgate

LIAdR (Liberate Iraq and Democratize the Region)

PNAC Attack

The era:

The Regression

Neo-theocratic Age

The Rollback

The Torture Years

I like it.

But I'd suggest changing the second line to

Went to war and made blood run

I think it scans better - but then what do I know?

Georgie, Georgie, bomb and gun,
Went to war and made blood run
When the truth saw light of day,
Georgie, Georgie ran away.

You're right. The "the" adds an extra syllable that messes up the verse. As does two-syllable "Iraq" vs. one sylable "war."

Iraq War, 2003-
Afghan War, 2001-
War on Terrorism, 2001-

These won't necessarily be names for the ages (LC only got around to shifting from "Vietnamese Conflict" to "Vietnam War" as the preferred subject heading for that war within the last year.) But they do identify commonly used names for these wars at the time the wars started needing names.

Then they have the cross-references, other terms seen in the literature that didn't make a main entry, but were worth noting. Here's the list for those:

For Iraq War, 2003-:
Anglo-American Invasion of Iraq, 2003-
Gulf War II, 2003-

No cross-references given for Afghan War,
though it has a "broader term" reference to
"War on Terrorism. 2001-".

For War on Terrorism, 2001-:
Enduring Freedom, Operation, 2001-
Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, 2001-
Global War on Terror, 2001-
Noble Eagle, Operation, 2001-
Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-
Operation Noble Eagle, 2001-
Terror War, 2001-
Terrorism War, 2001-
War against Terrorism, 2001-
War on Terror, 2001-

Remember when military names weren't choosen for maximum PR affect?

I really think it should be clear that in the US, only Congress can declare war, and they haven't.

"I've Got a Name."

Isn't it fun to be hysterical about something so bloody awful?

3. "Needless to say, the president is correct. Whatever it was he said."

4. "I don't do quagmires."

5. "I don't do diplomacy."

6. "I don't do foreign policy."

12. "If I know the answer, I'll tell you the answer. And if I don't, I'll just respond cleverly."

13. "I believe what I said yesterday. I don't know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it's what I said."

By blowing the hell out of all the places they are not.

Probably a war name in there somewhere.

How about “The Idiot's Crusade”?

No, they'd say we were insulting the troops, when that wasn't where the insult was aimed...

No, it wasn't the Cat in the Hat, though I can't place it.

But the Cat in the Hat Comes Back has a very good metaphor for what GWB has been doing about terrorism.

If you recall the story, the Cat creates a pink bathtub ring, and then uses a number of different mechanisms to try to clean it up (a dress, a wall, shoes, a rug, a bed). Each iteration cleans the previous item but simply moves the mess onto the next item. Then the Cat and his helpers (smaller cats who live in his hat) use milk, a TV and a fan to blow the ring out into the yard. This sprays the snow outside with pink goo. Their cunning plan is to use violence on the pink spots:

My cats are all clever.
My cats are good shots.
My cats have good guns.
They will kill all those spots.

But shooting at the pink spots just spreads them further. The children keep asking the cat to stop, and it keeps ignoring them and adding more cats to the effort. Eventually the whole yard is pink. The cat claims that this is all part of the plan, and finally releases something called VOOM. The VOOM cleans up all the pink and shovels the snow off of the path to boot.

So, back here in the real world, the snow is starting to look pretty damned pink. The cats are all out of the hat and shooting at pink snow wherever they can. And I don't see any VOOM (is this where the Rapture comes in the plan?)

Oh yeah. That one is entirely correct.

What Americans call the French and Indian War, we in Britain call the Seven Year War (or rather a part of it that embarassingly went on for 9 years).

What I've always known of as the Indian or Sepoy or Great Mutiny (or some permutation of those; previously referenced on Making Light) is called by Indians, the First War of Indian (or National) Independence. (When Brits and Indians meet the polite thing to do is refer to that event as The Great Rebellion, which is also more accurate than the other two names).

George R R Martin mentioned somewhere that the war he knew as the War of the Three Henrys had been renamed The Wars of Religion (due to socioeconomic forces having become more popular than Great Men).

I think that naming this war after a casus belli is unlikely, for more reasons than I can type just now, so we'll probably go with a geographical tag, unless something really memorable occurs. Of course, we don't know what the most memorable thing about this war will be until it's over.

@100: It's not in the book, but I believe the Cat in the Hat TV Special (the one with Allan Sherman) involves finding something that Cat has missed by eliminating everywhere it isn't. (Checking Wikipedia; yes, they mention it too.)

@103: I think I've seen at least one commentator remark on the nuclear overtones for VOOM in _Thc Cat in the Hat Comes Back_. I'm hoping this doesn't give the administration too many ideas... (Checking Google; yes, there's a New Yorker article online making the same association; a rather silly article in many ways, but I also was reminded of it myself when I first read the story to my kids a while back. Of course, there's only so far you can take the analogy and still be able to contemplate reading the book as a bedtime story...)

The Voom War

How about the War of Non-WMD? An assumed casus belli, accurate, and possibly reasonably memorable.

Could also read: Bush II War

or even: Bush II War II (Bush II War I being Afghanistan)

(ps: Melody suggests the Sold War)

Sure, Melody. Could the choreography be done by the director who did Springtime for Hitler?

The bloody war. 'fuck' was only used by intellectuals over here in those days, and not in polite company.

Hey, that's progress.

Greg London @100:

No, it wasn't the Cat in the Hat, though I can't place it.

It's the animated TV special of _The Cat in the Hat_ which presents the very scientific method of finding the missing "moss-covered, three-handled family gredunza" (begone, Mr. Freud, you are not needed here!) by labeling every place it is not with a code number in permanent marker: L-103, 2736B, and so on. All set to music.

One of the first left-bloggerian names for this war was "Operation Inigo Montoya," as in the _Princess Bride_ character who says "Allo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You [strike "killed"] [allegedly attempted to kill] my father. Prepare to die."

So . . . I dunno how to combine all this concisely, but this is the War to Avenge the Alleged Attempted Mass Destruction of the Moss-Covered Three-Handled Family Gredunza by Process of Extreme Elimination.

A disaster.

Even Tony Blair said so, according to what I read on the Huffington Post today. It's interesting though to hear why he thinks it's a disaster. Here goes...

Tony Blair went close last night to admitting that the invasion of Iraq had been disastrous. Challenged in an interview on Al-Jazeera's new English-language channel that the Western intervention in Iraq had "so far been pretty much of a disaster", he gave a brief agreement before swiftly moving on.

He said: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It is not difficult because of some accident in planning, it is difficult because there is a deliberate strategy, al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other, to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

Sigh.

History will not be kind to Bush's Poodle.

Especially since you just know Mr. Cheney thought he was being oh-so-grand-strategically -clever and forestalling the Chinese by blocking their access to oil, whatever he told the Shrub and whatever twisted Freudian issues were driving same lamented vegetable.

(Apologies to all. Couldn't resist.)

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that I'm not losing my mind... So how about:

The Gredunza War

Hm. Is there a clinical psychological name for being unconvinced of the non-existence of some threatening thing, and the psychosis manifests itself by the patient destroying all the places it might be? There are some pretty specific psychosises out there, so thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

I forgot to call the shade by its proper name, so it kept haunting the thread. Begone, Dr. Freud. That should do it.

Well done. Particularly the final kicker.

Abi #136: I do my best. Thanks.

Alas, having far less poetry in my soul, I preferred the original title given to all the various actions purportedly against Al-Queda: The War Against Terror. Its acroynm is just the perjorative to describe the conduct of Bush and his cronies since 2001.

So this would be the Mesopotamian Edition of 'The War Against Terror'...

From our Brit POV it is perhaps the 4th or 5th Iraq War. So for the Iraqis it must be the Fifth British Invasion. Or the Second American War.

Before I'd name the war, I'd ask to know
What I was calling "in" and calling "out",
And how this situation's like to grow.
It's clarity we've too long been without.
New York, Afghanistan, Madrid, Iraq,
Guantanamo and London, Bali too;
Iran and North Korea, from the talk,
And then Peoria? and me? and you?
We move in darkness, as it seems to me
Not of fear only, but a shades of lie
That hide the places we become less free
And trumpet out the ways that we could die.
Until we get so used to constant strife
That we don't call it war, but normal life.

We've got a war with no front and no rear,
the enemy is one that we have made,
yet we cannot get our slow arses into gear.

The enemy is both far distant and near,
by devious means we know that he is paid,
we've got a war with no front and no rear.

The truth's been told but we don't want to hear
things that might put our leader in the shade,
yet we cannot get our slow arses into gear.

We've told the public all the lies they'll bear
and now they seem to want us all to fade;
we've got a war with no front and no rear.

We've called the enemy both dark and queer;
but now he's vanished into the parade
yet we cannot get our slow arses into gear.

We'll win this war, by all that we hold dear,
there's still a load of lies we have not said;
we've got a war with no front and no rear,
yet we cannot get our slow arses into gear.

It will go done in history as the only war everybody lost.

Combining the gradualist approach of Barack Obama (and other Democrats) with Sy Hersh's New Yorker piece this week raises the ultimate nightmare scenario: Hanging around Iraq, one more Friedman at a time, until the only solution seems to be attacking Iran? Will the Democrats wake up and call a halt to the administration's plans for Iran before it's too late?

wouldn't shrub war i be afghanistan?

i got to say i like the way that "shrub war iraq" & "shrub war iran" make them sound like seasons of the real world.

what was that about living in a facsimile?....

1. The War of Embarrassment

2. The Iraq Debacle

Question asked by child in 2036: "Mom, where was Iraq?"

Yes, you're right. I was thinking of 'I' as both the numeral and the initial (for Iraq and Iran) and forgot Afghanistan because it didn't fit that pattern.

Olbermann on lessons learned in Vietnam

Dubya Dumber Two.

When the going goes dumb, shame on you, when the dumb gets dumber.. shame on.. dumbed again.

It is really a rather euphonious nickname he has isn't it?

how about a Dumb Dubya, a children's book.

One could have pages with nice pictures and lines lines about Dumping Dubya in the Dumpster or maybe dropping Dubya down the drain.

Rush Limbaugh steps on stage, he sings:

Things were bleak for conservatism
despite a hero without jism
a paragon of virtues great
who really knew how to orate
and to the folk communicate
like the folk likes us to do

reelection was not for sure
soon our majesty might be forgotten
then, god bless his imprimatur,
We got some help from Bin Laden (Twin towers fall in back)

The complete keyboard warriors chorus line joins in:

Now its -
Flowers For Rumsfeld and Cheney too
Coal lumps for Demos and Crats
this war is Dubya Dumber two
The Iraquis - better have good welcome mats

step step turn (shoot iraqui child)

Flowers for Neocon politicos
missions accomplished for votes
Jeff Gannon has a pretty nose
those aren't grenades that he totes

shimmy shimmmy wiggle turn (torture dead iraqui child)

Bush comes on stage: Wait a second wait a second wait a second
What are you doing torturing that child.

pro-torture pundit looks up from torturing the child: I'm torturing the child.

Bush mugs for the audience and does wide arm waving: I CAN SEE THAAAAAT

drum roll.

Bush sings solo: I never ordered you to torture a child, wink wink
I do not think it is the thing to do, wink wink
However it does not look like you are doing what I see that you are doing

soldier: wink wink

Chorus line joins: We do not torture but reserve the rights, wink wink
to do whats necessary in a fight, wink wink
the body's dead and starts to stink
wink wink, wink wink, wink wink

Bush: Blink blink!

When torture is done by us, which it ain't
it doesn't have that criminal taint,
cause it ain't, we've passed a law to legalize
when we need to kill, maim or sodomize,
which is a depth to which we don't sink!

ALL: Wink, wink.

Bush: Blink, Blink

All: Wink Wink!

Bush: Sorry, I mis-stated.

All: Never mein Fuhrer, blink Blink!

Bush (sotto voce): That kid is really starting to turn.

Limbaugh: Yes, he's gone bad alright. completely Arabic.

-------------------------------------------

hmm, I guess I won't write the part where Cheney comes on stage and sings: Arabs are people too (they taste great with wine)