As war evolves, so does language'Mission accomplished' has now become synonymous with miscalculations

Since Pfcj .dcnl Buth'i May X 2003, speech, 'minion iccompliihed* Ku Uktii. icon A»HI wmii IASSOCIAIED mil)

W HEN SYNTHIA LAURA MOLINAtried to drum up clients for herhealth-management consultingfirm, the reaction often was notwhat she anticipated Did youconsider changing the nime ofyour business, customers

would ask.Eventually. Molina and her associates felt they

had no choice but to do laIts former name Mission Accomplished.•When you told people the rume, their initial rex-

Uon was 'Oh. realty' It was dear that the companyname had been eroded, the company brand hadbe«n eroded.* utd Molina, whose venture is knownnow as Central IQ 'My sense was it was so damaged,it may take a generation to lose thai association.

'Maybe a political group would want to buy It?/she wondered

•Mission accomplished.* a military phrase, longago became pan of common jargon to describe aJob well done. Bui the term took a turn for thewone after May i. 2003.

That was the day President Bush declared an endto major fighting in Iraq. He did MI in front of a red.white and blue banner that proclaimed 'MissionAccomplished* on the deck of the USS AbrahamLincoln off the Southern California coast.

The power and authority of the phrase, at leastIn civilian usage, has since toppled like a dicta-tor's statue In Baghdad.

On a long list of unintended consequences andsignificant costs of the Iraq war, the erosion of"mission accomplished' from a wtdely used termof affirmation to one of miscalculation isn't terri-bly significant. But It illustrates that vocabulary tsshifting and organic and that overly declarativestatements are probably best avoided, especiallyby president*.

•Rhetoric Invites you to be assertive, and some-time* It's our undoing.* said Martin MedhurU. a

communications professor at Baylor Universitywho previously directed the study of presidentialrhetoric at (he George Bush School of Govern-ment and Public Service at Texas A&M University:-[:'•> like Nixon's proclamation, 'I'm not a crook,'ultimately becomes the tagtine for being a crook.'

The term 'mission accomplished* evolved Inmilitary use during World War II. usually In thecontra! of a successful flight operation such as astrafing run or photo reconnaissance — technical-ly a "mission," according to A. Maijoric Taylor'sTV Language of Hbrlf War S In 1944. Eventually,Its use became so common — and benign — IIcould be found on everything from plumbing tipsto recipes.

But during the past three years, the term has allbut vanished from non-political use. particularly Inthe US. media. A search of the electronic libraryLeXteNexls showed that the phrase b now mostlyconfined to references on sports pages and occa-sionally In news stories unrelated to war and poli-tics in publications outside the United States.

The top references are jokes, hluo and Insults.Ninety percent are negative or humorous,* laidPaul Payack. who runs the Global Language Moni-tor In San Dwwo. 'It's a tagiine that evokes not asmart thing to do, stepping into a trap, exactly whatnM to do at an apparent moment of triumph. Like•wardrobe malfunction,* II just has become part ofthe public consdousneu.*

Payack analyze* changes in the use of the wordsand phrases on the Internet — often, he said, forcorporate clients and Investors looking to tracktrends In the marketplace. With the use of algo-rithms, he has concluded among other things, thatthe English language had 988.968 words as of lastweek and that *0*T is the most frequently spokenword on Earth.

But for all the unusual stuff that he comes across,he uld he marveled at what has happened to "mis-sion accomplished* in three years of lu ricochetingaround cyberspace.

In 2003, the year the Iraq war began, the term•mission accomplished' appeared 37S,ooo times onthe Internet. In 2004, it appeared 500.000 time*. Byiocs. It was more than 1 million.

Arc missions being accomplished twice as tut as

before? Hardly Payack said the phrase has assumeda new life In political reporting and elsewhere asshorthand for •grabbing defeat from thejaws of vic-tory.' A humor blog last tall read, *Bush dedans"mission accomplished' In New Orleans.*The "mission accompUihed* event has contribut-

ed to the president'* plunge In popularity In 1003,Bush's name was linked lo the phrase on the Internet 30.000 times, Payack said That rose to 50,000 In2001. 73.000 In 2005 and 60,000 times in the firstthree months alone of 2006.

The president's father, George H.W. Bush, washimself ridiculed after overplaying his hand aspresident with 'Read my lips: No new taxes ' butthat was before the rise of the commercial Internet, which sustains and amplifies the missteps,said Nancy Snow, a communicaaons professor atCalifornia State University, Pulkrton.

• 'Mission accomplished' is so uniquely Ameri-can, the sense of being overconfident,* Snow said'I can see why they took advantage of that day, butas I watched that play out, I Just had a sinking feet-ing.*

Among the most frequent variations of "missionaccomplished* that turned up in an electronic li-brary search were words spoken tn 2003 by then-White House press secretary Art Fleischer shortlybefore the president's declaration:

• 'I'm not going to be able to shed any more lighton when the president will say the mission Is ac-complished* — Apnl 13,2003.• 'At the appropriate time, when the president Isready, the president will have more thoughts toshare with the nation about the mission, what wasaccomplished In ihe mission.*—April 27.2003.

Fleischer, who left the White House Job In Jury2003 and now runs his own corporate communica-tions consulting firm In Wcstchester County, N.Y,said in a telephone Interview that Rush's use of thephrase that spring was unavoidable after the stat-ue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by Iraqisand U.S. Marines in central Baghdad's FirdosSquare.

•Between April 6th. when the statue fell, and May1.1 was pummeied with questions by reporters. In-cluding 'Is he trying to stretch this out for politicalreasons/ * Fleischer sakl "One hour after the statuecame down, the press was asking, "Why hasn't Bushdeclared the war over yet/*

Fleischer, who was with the president on thedeck of the t.'ss Abraham Lincoln, maintained thatthe sign was hung by someone on the ship, not bythe White House. The Navy disputed that it hadposted the banner in various press accounts.

Bush also never actually said the words -missionaccomplished' May i on the aircraft carrier. He actu-ally said the opposite. "Our mission continues,' hetoW the crew. 'AH^aida ts wounded, not destiuyvd"

Afterwards, however, the president could hardlyhave said, 'Read my lips. 1 didn't say •mission ac-complished' * The stagecraft of the event — in-cluding the president's arrival In a green (lightJumpsuit In the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Vikingas It made a dramauc tailhook* landing — waspmposrIUi, audacious and meant to send the mes-sage that the 'Mission Accomplished* ilgn suc-dnrtty conveyed

Too succinctly. It turned out, for both the presi-dent and the status of the phrase Itself.

•On May i. 2003. It was a powerful and accuratemetaphor that played to the president's benefit,and as events grew worse. It was a powerful meta-phor that played to the detriment of the presi-dent.' Fleischer said 'In retrospect, the sign wastoo declarative, while the president's words wereaccurately subtle. It all got undone because of allthe pott-war problems we've had.*