The battle battle being over, let's fight the war war.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Especially with more modern conflicts, we have several names for the same war, and I'd like to see a catalog (or other mechanism) that would give the preferred name to which other names could be redirected. I don' t care that much about the specific names, although, when possible, I'd prefer not to have the main entry as "Operation Something", given at least the U.S. tendency to change the actual code name to a sound bite (e.g., "Operation Just Cause" in Panama was actually BLUE SPOON, and POLO STEP was the code name for "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

I'll start with some U.S. humor:

American Civil War, War to Free the Slaves, The Late Unpleasantness Between the States*, or the War of Yankee Aggression?

First and Second Vietnamese War? Indochina War and Vietnam War? How about earlier conflicts going back to the Two Trung Ladies?

1948, 1967, and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars? War of Israeli Independence? Six Days' War?

Is "Iraq War" Iran-Iraq, 1990-1991, or 2003-present (or do we break the current situation into war and occupation)?

There are other questions, less disambiguation but perhaps a place to find national names (e.g., Great Patriotic War, Pacific War). Maybe these can be a convention in the introduction to the main article on a war.


*Really, that's what the very proper docent, in the Museum of the Confederacy, called it.

[Derek Harkness]

There is no 'one size fits all' solution for these. Each war needs to be discussed separately. The general rule should be to use the common English name where such common name exists. Often the two (or more) sides in a war each have their own names. One side's occupation is another's liberation. You can rarely select a name that pleases both sides. The USA's, "Korean War," is China's, "War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea." A pro-western bias is inevitable. It's also typical to bias the name towards the victors view.

For most battles in history, there are a standard set of names people follow. E.g. the English Civil War. It happened to be a British civil war but English is the name that historians have stuck on it so English it is. These names are long decided and it would be silly to rock the boat with any novel names. For more modern events, especially on going events like the Iraq War now, names are more difficult as they do sometimes change as things escalate. I doubt that anyone would say that the Iraq war ended when Bush announced the conclusion of major operations form the deck of an aircraft carrier. At some point there was a change form full scale war to occupation with guerilla resistance. Things may flair up again, we don't know the future. Pin pointing just when it ended is something that the perspective of time will tell us.

[George Swan]

I'd like to see a catalog (or other mechanism) that would give the preferred name to which other names could be redirected...

I'd prefer not to have the main entry as "Operation Something", given at least the U.S. tendency to change the actual code name to a sound bite (e.g., "Operation Just Cause" in Panama was actually BLUE SPOON, and POLO STEP was the code name for "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

There was an incident, in Afghanistan, that started on February 10th, 2003, outside the small village of Lejay.

I'd like to write about it.  Should I do so under "Skirmish at Lejay", or "Operation Eagle Fury".

If I write about it here I plan to do so in a way that is seen to completely conform to neutrality and verifiability requirements, and I would welcome advice about this.

I find this incident interesting because, although Bush administration spin-doctors claim all the Guantanamo captives were "captured on the battlefield" the specific allegation against the individual captives only support this claim for a few dozen captives.  Eleven captives were apprehended on February 10th, 2003, and sent to HQ.  Nine of them were being held in Guantanamo a year and a half later.

These were nine men who could be described as being captured on a battlefield with reasonable accuracy.  But, from my personal reading of the allegations memos, being captured near a battlefield did not establish that these men were combatants. 

A convoy of American vehicles, with an Afghan warlord's troops to act as auxiliaries, had set out to surprise and apprehend a rogue warlord, who had a fortified compound on the single road in a mountain valley.  When the American convoy got nearby shots were fired.  While the American documents describe it as a "vicious fire" no actual casualties were incurred.

The Americans called in airstrikes on the ridgelines they thought the fire came from.  They rounded up every man of military age in the region, and they put a roadblock on the highway.  Eventually they had rounded up approximately 70 men.  They decided to send eleven men back to headquarters. 

How did they pick the eleven men?
*Were the men wearing army surplus jackets? 
*Were their clothes stained with stains that might be blood, or machine oil?
*Did the men seem to be suffering from temporary hearing loss, that might have been caused by firing automatic weapons?

Were any of the men captured with weapons?  No.  One AK-47 was found.  Several of the men faced the allegation that this single weapon was theirs.

What I didn't realize when I first read those transcripts was how the US escalated this incident.

It triggered what was called "Operation Eagle Fury" -- another example of a name that seems to have been picked to boost morale.

An entire battalion was mobilized to comb the area.  And aircraft from half a dozen air forces, including a squadron of B-52s, were mobilized. 

American spin doctors claim the air elements took out several dozen armed men on foot patrols.  One trouble with this claim is that civilians routinely went armed in some areas of Afghanistan, and this valley was a center for Opium production.  These armed foot patrols could have been the foot soldiers of a local drug lord -- and not resistance fighters at all.

Spin doctors claimed that this operation was able to round up a dozen or so Taliban members.  It is not clear to me whether this was supposed to be a further dozen suspects.  If there was a further dozen suspects rounded up they either never made it to Guantanamo, or they had all been sent home prior to the instantiation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals in 2004.

The aerial bombardment started with bombing Lejay on February 11th, the next day.  Their were reports of extensive civilian casualties, which  I personally found credible. 

If the village was bombed because the villagers were merely suspected of having provided sanctuary to resistance elements I believe this would have been a war crime.

American intelligence analysts singled out one of the men, and decided he was the squad leader.  The documents don't explicitly state why they reached this conclusion.  But it seems it is because he had fought against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders two decades earlier.

Several of the captives faced the allegation that they were captured with two senior Taliban leaders.  In all but one captive's allegation memo the names of these two senior Taliban leaders were withheld.  In one captive's memo the names of the two senior Taliban leaders were spelled out, in the clear.  And these two senior Taliban leaders were two of the local villagers, whose names bore a passing resemblance to the names of two senior Taliban leaders.  One of these guys the analysts described as a senior Taliban leader was very young.  Analysts estimated he was only about 22 years old.  The other villager was a guy name Baridad -- a share-cropper.  Why was he one of the men sent to headquarters?  Hearing loss. 

Baridad claimed he lost much of his hearing due to an ear infection when he was a young child.  The senior Taliban leader named "Bari Dad Khan" was one of those in charge of the desrtuction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.  I find Baridad's account of himself credible.  And that was re-inforced when he was repatriated.  He is one of the few Afghans to have been interviewed when Afghan authorities cleared him upon his return in 2006 or 2007.  The reporters described him as perseverating that the Afghan translators present at his capture had stolen his life savings -- about $50 USD.

How typical was this of American operations in 2003?  I am afraid it may be completely typical.

What is highly remarkable about this incident is that although American forces had been taking casualties in Afghanistan -- had taken about 100 at this point -- most were due to land mines.  No one had fired on American troops in this area before.  No one had fired on these particular troops.  Lejay is in Helmand.  Which is NOW a center of very active Taliban activity.  But it wasn't in 2003, when this incident, which may have only been spontaneous pot-shots, which did not cause any casualties, triggered a massive and indiscriminate reaction.

How much does each 2000 pound bomb cost?  How much does it cost to keep a squadron of B-52s aloft for a day?  For a week?

So, reports from the DoD's spokesmen claimed the operation was a big success.  But all the captives have been sent home, and the only permanent success seems to have been taking one AK-47 out of circulation.

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

I'd like to see a catalog (or other mechanism) that would give the preferred name to which other names could be redirected...

I'd prefer not to have the main entry as "Operation Something", given at least the U.S. tendency to change the actual code name to a sound bite (e.g., "Operation Just Cause" in Panama was actually BLUE SPOON, and POLO STEP was the code name for "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

There was an incident, in Afghanistan, that started on February 10th, 2003, outside the small village of Lejay.

I'd like to write about it.  Should I do so under "Skirmish at Lejay", or "Operation Eagle Fury".

As has been mentioned, no one size fits all. In this case, I'd search for what has been written about it and try to find the most common name. You have the added problem that transliterating the place name from Dari, Pashtun, etc., may not be clean; that's one reason why I suggest looking for the most common usage.

I'll never say never, but the more dramatic names, such as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "Operation Just Cause" were not the actual operational names, but something mentioned afterwards in a news release; the two real ones, respectively, were POLO STEP and BLUE SPOON.

I'm not familiar enough with this incident to know if it was large enough that it would have called for spin doctors after the fact. There are cases where a dramatic name has been given to a preannounced operation. Personally, I try to use unambiguous place names if at all possible.

If I write about it here I plan to do so in a way that is seen to completely conform to neutrality and verifiability requirements, and I would welcome advice about this.

Sure. Unless you have direct knowledge of the subject, however, seeing neutrality and verifiability tends to come from the sources you cite.

While they would call this Original Synthesis at The Other Place, I see nothing wrong with using biased sources in an unbiased way. This is a perfectly reasonable technique in intelligence analysis, when the spin doctors are kept out of the loop. For example, during the Vietnam War, one of my assignments was to read successive issues of the North Vietnamese party journal, Nhan Dan. At the time, it was written in heavy revolutionary jargon; things change, as it's now an interesting website. There was information to be gained, for example, from who wrote signed articles, their frequency, and their prominence.

I find this incident interesting because, although Bush administration spin-doctors claim all the Guantanamo captives were "captured on the battlefield" the specific allegation against the individual captives only support this claim for a few dozen captives.  Eleven captives were apprehended on February 10th, 2003, and sent to HQ.  Nine of them were being held in Guantanamo a year and a half later.

These were nine men who could be described as being captured on a battlefield with reasonable accuracy.  But, from my personal reading of the allegations memos, being captured near a battlefield did not establish that these men were combatants. 

I'd need to see the memos, or, if available, the primary military reports. Certainly with the U.S. military, there are nuances that can be meaningful but certainly not obvious. I remember a report that someone claimed was the position of "U.S. intelligence", which was quickly thrown out when I looked at the message addressees. At the time, all operational addresses started with "R" (e.g., RUAMZQ) while intelligence addresses started with "Y"

A convoy of American vehicles, with an Afghan warlord's troops to act as auxiliaries, had set out to surprise and apprehend a rogue warlord, who had a fortified compound on the single road in a mountain valley.  When the American convoy got nearby shots were fired.  While the American documents describe it as a "vicious fire" no actual casualties were incurred.

The Americans called in airstrikes on the ridgelines they thought the fire came from.  They rounded up every man of military age in the region, and they put a roadblock on the highway.  Eventually they had rounded up approximately 70 men.  They decided to send eleven men back to headquarters. 

How did they pick the eleven men?
*Were the men wearing army surplus jackets? 
*Were their clothes stained with stains that might be blood, or machine oil?
*Did the men seem to be suffering from temporary hearing loss, that might have been caused by firing automatic weapons?

Were any of the men captured with weapons?  No.  One AK-47 was found.  Several of the men faced the allegation that this single weapon was theirs.

What I didn't realize when I first read those transcripts was how the US escalated this incident.

Whether I agree with your facts or not, the preceding sentence definitely does not read as neutral to me, and the notes before, which I recognize are not in an article, come across as argumentative rather than documentary.

It triggered what was called "Operation Eagle Fury" -- another example of a name that seems to have been picked to boost morale.

An entire battalion was mobilized to comb the area.  And aircraft from half a dozen air forces, including a squadron of B-52s, were mobilized. 

An "entire" battalion? What's so strange about using a battalion-sized task force? Without knowing the terrain and size of area to be searched, a battalion might be large or small. As a rough rule of thumb, when a conventional military unit searches for guerillas, commanders like to have a 10:1 personnel advantage.

"Squadron" of B-52s? I'd like to see sourcing here. One normally speaks of B-52 wings, which do have a single bomber squadron of 30-40 aircraft; it takes a lot of other units to support those bombers. I find it very, very hard to understand why any current operation would call for B-52s in squadron strength. Even when they "carpet bombed" in the Vietnam-era ARC LIGHT strikes, they operated in units of 3. AFAIK in Afghanistan, B-52s primarily operate singly, and deliver on-demand support with Joint Direct Action Munitions, a guided bomb.

American spin doctors claim the air elements took out several dozen armed men on foot patrols.  One trouble with this claim is that civilians routinely went armed in some areas of Afghanistan, and this valley was a center for Opium production.  These armed foot patrols could have been the foot soldiers of a local drug lord -- and not resistance fighters at all.

Spin doctors claimed that this operation was able to round up a dozen or so Taliban members.  It is not clear to me whether this was supposed to be a further dozen suspects.  If there was a further dozen suspects rounded up they either never made it to Guantanamo, or they had all been sent home prior to the instantiation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals in 2004.

Neither repeating "terrorist" nor "spin doctor" suggests neutrality. Try to find more neutral wording.

The aerial bombardment started with bombing Lejay on February 11th, the next day.  Their were reports of extensive civilian casualties, which  I personally found credible. 

OK, what information do you consider credible, and why? Simply asking, not challenging - do you have experience in bomb damage assessment if you are working with the primary reports, or do you have an interpretation by a qualified neutral analyst?

To put it another way, if I read that B-52 tail number 93820 expended seven Mark 84 JDAMs, I'd have a pretty good idea what damage those could do. I'd need to plot the aim points against a map to see the effect on a village, or I'd like to have someone else do so.

If the village was bombed because the villagers were merely suspected of having provided sanctuary to resistance elements I believe this would have been a war crime.

American intelligence analysts singled out one of the men, and decided he was the squad leader.  The documents don't explicitly state why they reached this conclusion.  But it seems it is because he had fought against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders two decades earlier.

"Seems"? According to whom?
...snipping details without sourcing or details.

How typical was this of American operations in 2003?  I am afraid it may be completely typical.

And the reasons for your fear? Sources, personal expertise, or feeling? You might have hard data, but so far I'm reading what seems like your personal opinion.

What is highly remarkable about this incident is that although American forces had been taking casualties in Afghanistan -- had taken about 100 at this point -- most were due to land mines.  No one had fired on American troops in this area before.  No one had fired on these particular troops.  Lejay is in Helmand.  Which is NOW a center of very active Taliban activity.  But it wasn't in 2003, when this incident, which may have only been spontaneous pot-shots, which did not cause any casualties, triggered a massive and indiscriminate reaction.

Again, sources.

How much does each 2000 pound bomb cost?  How much does it cost to keep a squadron of B-52s aloft for a day?  For a week?

I'm losing your point here. There's no secret about what a 2000 pound Mark 84 costs (dumb bomb), as well as what the JDAM guidance kit costs. I probably could give you a rough idea from memory, but I'd prefer to check the actual numbers -- which are available within a couple of minutes.

As I've said, I want to understand why you think B-52s were operating as a squadron. With JDAM, there is absolutely no tactical advantage, and some disadvantages, to having multiple aircraft over a village-sized area. Now, if the B-52s were flying to and from the U.S. (Minot or Barksdale AFB), or perhaps Diego Garcia or Guam, there might be a stream of aircraft making the long trip to have one over the battlefield.

At this point, I am completely lost as to what encyclopedia-relevant point you are trying to make with respect to cost.

So, reports from the DoD's spokesmen claimed the operation was a big success.  But all the captives have been sent home, and the only permanent success seems to have been taking one AK-47 out of circulation.

I can't judge that statement without seeing the report. I also want to see the report that says the results were that one AK-47 was taken out of circulation, as a military after-action report would say more than that.

The operation may have been idiotic, but it's hard to tell given the accusatory and challenging style in which you are writing.  Let the documents and facts speak for themselves. If you want to interpret, then be specific, like your source for the type of ordnance used, with references to the effect of those weapons.