The tides of change are moving. Not the tides of war, because, as has become fashionable, this is not a declared war, but merely something that results with the army and Marines shooting at Iraqis for some reason. Bush’s regime is in no way significantly different from any of the last 50 years in never requesting a declaration of war.

However, there are some extraordinarily significant differences.

Conflict is a very psychological activity. The effects of nuclear weapons, for instance, are measured primarily in psychological terms. The idea of nuclear deterrence works only to the extent that people are so terrified of nuclear attack that their terror would prevent them from striking first. But psychological warfare is something that we at least like to pretend our nation minimizes. Propaganda was a gift we’ve always had, but at least we kept it on certain levels. Posters for war bonds, movies and anything uttered by James Stewart were always a good source, but the names of military campaigns were left on the outside.

The psychological operations for this action are immense. Although we’d been informed that all Iraqis hated Saddam and wanted him gone, we still resorted to “Shock and Awe,” an operation designed to prove that we can kill things and blow things up. Why? So we can produce shock and/or awe and win our war psychologically, even if it did take killing a lot more Iraqis to triumph on paper.

The name for the military operation itself speaks volumes about how desperate the situation is: “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” See? Policymakers weren’t certain that the average American would pick up that every bomb, every soldier and every casualty is going to liberate Iraqis, so that they can enjoy a pro-American government that we set up for them.

Compare this to Operation Desert Storm. There was nothing pejorative about the title. It was just an action, one that we were taking because it was deemed necessary by the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. It wasn’t claiming any moral high ground, because the only term that was definitive about it was “storm.” Frankly, that isn’t even encouraging. Storms are disgusting things that pour torrential rains, hail on Lexuses and kill people with lightning strikes. Storms are hardly moral agents, to say the least, and they don’t have a whole lot of fans. Or Operation Overlord? We invaded France to chase out the Nazis and our title makes us sound like the bad guys.

The terms “Iraqi freedom,” on the other hand, is a sign that we’re really reaching to justify our attacks, so much that we have to remind people of their supposed intent on a minute-by-minute basis. How much is it working? Let’s just say it’s preaching to the converted. To everyone who doesn’t buy the tenuous link between Iraq and terrorism, Operation Iraqi Freedom is still Operation Kill Saddam Because We Want Him Dead. That’s all it means, and any freedom the Iraqis who survive may gain is secondary to a regime that will be more susceptible to U.S. manipulation. But it doesn’t matter, since now every newspaper in the country has to use this cooked-up phrase to pretend it’s a humanitarian motive behind all this, when in fact, it was the next step on Bush’s “war on terror” that ceased to be about terrorism after the first negotiations to use Saudi airfields.

But it’s transparent and obvious what they want to do. By giving it a noble title, the actions are supposed to reach a moral high ground faster than everyone else. If it was titled “Operation Kill Saddam, Get Some Oil, Drive SUVs Forever,” the American people would see that the aim was to kill Saddam Hussein to install a puppet regime which would funnel oil to the United States and its petroleum based White House, who aren’t exactly going to suffer from oil profits in the future. If it was titled “Operation Wolf,” then it would be a lot less painful for our troops, since they’d be fighting at their local arcade, with a gun shaped like a real Uzi. Trust me, it was impressive at age seven.

But those operations were mere code words. They didn’t have any moral or practical significance. Let’s just say it doesn’t take much of a skeptic to say the same thing about Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Someone should tell high-level government officials a secret. The psychological operations are supposed to work on the enemy, not us.