Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
It isn't true, in any conventional meaning of the term, that the United States or its NATO partners 'invaded' Afghanistan.
Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.
We don't declare war any more, we declare national defense.
People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.
All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.
It is sort of interesting that in our society this days we are very quick to apply the term 'war' to places where thare are no actual wars, and loath to apply the term 'war' when we are actually fighting wars.
We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war.
I still gasp at the revealing lingo for weapons: erector launchers, thrust ratios; my teeth grind reflexively when Dubya sputters Eye-Rack and Eye-Ran have 'nookyular capabacity.
I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new-one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.
New terms used like, 'overseas contingency operation' instead of the word 'war' - that reflects a worldview that is out of touch with the enemy that we face. We can't spin our way out of this threat.
'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.
I'm interested in language. We used to call it the War Office. Then it became the Ministry of Defence. We used to talk about the hydrogen bomb, now we talk about a deterrent. And the language is very cleverly constructed to give the impression that it's not what it is.
I don't like the word nuclear exchange, it's like an exchange of wheat and so on. It's a horrible term and I always cross it out when I see it somewhere.
When you look at a lot of the military histories, and even modern military history, everyone pretty much refers to each other by nicknames.
The phrase surgical strike might be more acceptable if it were common practice to perform surgery with high explosives.
Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?
The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?
