'Boots on the ground' and other military jargon are designed to confuseThe Guardian by Scott Beauchamp
In the carnival-mirror world of Washington bureaucracy, language is used to obscure more often than communicate the presence and role of US troops
When it comes to describing our military engagements across the world, Orwellian seems to be the language of choice for the US government. They consistently use the alchemy of bureaucratic language to transform words with clear meaning into jargon. This baffles any attempt to truly inform the public and keeps our national defense insidery and anti-democratic.
Take the phrase “boots on the ground”. The literal meaning of the words seems clear enough, and the colloquial use of the phrase – defined as “American forces deployed to a foreign country” – is unambiguous. So why was there such an awkward debate over this phrase after Barack Obama’s announcement last month that special forces advisers would be deployed to Syria?
It’s important to remember that if American “boots on the ground” was defined by actual boots on real ground, then it would be safe to say that we’re currently engaged in a worldwide deployment. America has bases in over 80 countries around the globe.
There are 113 “base sites” located in Germany alone. At any given moment there are nearly 250,000 American troops stationed overseas. Syria might be in the spotlight at the moment, but we also have a troop buildup currently happening in Africa, deployments in the Sinai and we even just recently sent Stryker armored vehicles to the Arctic Circle for the first time.
To list our considerable military involvement with the world, to describe the nearly unbroken chain of bases that girdle the globe, doesn’t amount to a knee-jerk condemnation of the situation. It’s just a prerequisite for having an honest conversation. But to avoid acknowledging the extent of American military undertakings is to implicitly condone them.
In the carnival-mirror world of Washington bureaucracy, language is used to obscure more often than communicate the presence and role of US troops abroad. So when White House press secretary Josh Earnest was asked to explain why Obama had gone back on his 2013 promise to not put “boots on the ground” in Syria, Earnest was forced to redefine the phrase to mean “large-scale, long-term ground combat operations in either Syria or Iraq”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/13/boots-on-the-ground-other-confusing-military-jargon-us-troops
