Operation Swarmer

Or: "So long, and thanks for flying Air Assault"

A recent check of top internet news searches reveals Operation SWARMER has caught enough public attention to make the list. That's a rarity at this point in the Iraq saga; most such actions pass with little notice. Generally CENTCOM offers a press release, and the media yawns and mentions the coalition effort somewhere near the bottom of a long wrap up of news headlined "Bombs Kill 10 in Baghdad". But not this time.

Here's the original press release:

TIKRIT, Iraq – Iraqi Security Forces and their Coalition partners launched the largest air assault operation since Operation Iraqi Freedom I today in southern Salah Ad Din province to clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra.

Operation Swarmer began this morning with soldiers from the Iraqi Army’s 1st Brigade, 4th Division, the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade conducting a combined air and ground assault to isolate the objective area.

The operation is expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted.

Operation Swarmer follows closely the completion of a combined Iraqi – Coalition operation west of Samarra in early March that yielded substantial enemy weapons and equipment caches.

The name Swarmer was derived from the name given to the largest peacetime airborne maneuvers ever conducted, in spring 1950 in North Carolina. Soon after this exercise, the 187th Infantry was selected to deploy to Korea as an Airborne Regimental Combat Team to provide General MacArthur with an airborne capability.

MNF-I issues press releases all the time; soldiers discover weapons cache, Marines conduct cordon-and-search operation with Iraqi troops, VBIED found on roadside, hospital refurbished, school reopened, etc, etc. If ever considered otherwise, this is now seen as the unglorious yeoman's work of Operation Iraqi Freedom - the nuts and bolts of rebuilding a nation. The press wants something headline worthy - a mosque bombing, US troops accidentally shooting an elderly grandmother, or a report that someone in an Iraqi police uniform dragged somebody else off to nowhere in the middle of the night.

But this time something in that press release caught somebody's eye: "...largest air assault operation since Operation Iraqi Freedom I." If you're a military insider you hardly notice the phrase. Why? Let's take a few words at a time - starting with "air assault". To many that means bombing campaign - and the comparison to OIF-1 brings immediate visions of Shock and Awe in Baghdad. To the most ardent members of the "anti-war" faction that iconic imagery epitomizes the capitalist aggressor's vicious assault on the people. And even the most ardent supporter of regime change in Iraq can acknowledge that bombs over Baghdad make a sobering visual: Here, this is what you wanted. Happy?

Wrong vision. Shock and Awe was an assault from the air, but was not "air assault" as defined by the US military. "Air assault" means the troops were inserted via helicopter; no more, no less. And if you think the language barrier between English-speaking peoples contributed to confusion, imagine for a moment how the various translated versions of the story read in the foreign press.

Now let's think about "largest since". The 101st was in on the initial invasion. Months later they rotated home. Without air assault units in Iraq we weren't launching air assaults. But now the 101st has returned to Iraq, therefore we are launching air assaults - it's what they do. But without that crucial piece of background knowledge the choice of phrasing makes it sound like something else altogether: escalation.

So this time the press release (that probably caused yawns throughout CENTCOM) got a markedly different reaction in the rest of the world. Let's spread the blame for this a bit. When military public affairs offices issue press releases they use phraseology the military understands, as explained above. But the press isn't on the same wavelength; they read "large air assault" and they expect corpse photos, pain and suffering, death and destruction, and all those things that merit a Pulitzer Prize. With that kind of pulse punding lead you can hardly blame them for not reading the whole thing. So what we have here is a failure to communicate - and sender and receiver can both do better next time.

But this time the phrase "launched the largest air assault operation since Operation Iraqi Freedom I" apparently touched off the largest round of TV coverage since OIF-1. Even last year's operations in Tall Afar - the largest of 2005 and perhaps the most spectacularly successful of the past three years - attracted relatively scant media attention. (Disclaimer: I don't live in America - my sense of the coverage is admittedly based on what I read about the coverage.) And with no reporters along for the initial ride (seating being at a premium and mission being the focus) apparently some of that coverage was a bit dramatic. Left on the sidelines for day one, a reporter's imagination could run wild.

But on day two the first reporters are brought in. Perhaps some with visions of dead babies, crying grandmothers, leveled houses, and white phosphorous raining from the sky. Maybe others with fond desires that they may capture a few heroic photos on par with blogger Mike Yon's.

Instead they find...

Well, I'll be damned - Iraqi and American soldiers conducting the unglorious yeoman's work of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And that just pisses them off.

Just another day in paradise.

Thanks for flying air assault.