In search of the 50,000-word enemy.

I've decided to apply for a civilian job at the Pentagon. I want to be the guy that comes up with each day's description of the counterinsurgent Iraqi enemy for press releases.

Whoever they have now is good, no question about it. I've been a fan of his work since the first week of May. Under his tutelage, the average length in print of the described Iraqi enemy has jumped from about four or five words in May ("pro-Saddam Baath Party holdouts"), to about 10 to 15 words in June ("Forces loyal to the regime of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein"), to the current 20 to 25 words (see below).

I believe I can do better. I am certain that, put in charge of the program, I can get the description up to 200 words by September, and more than 1000 by the New Year. In fact, I can envision a time when the capsule description of the Iraqi enemy can be stretched to the length of a Henry James novel. Once we do that, the might of the United States can no longer be questioned.

The evolution of the description of the post-victory Iraqi enemy has been messy, marked by fits and starts and dead-ends. I've actually been saving print descriptions of the enemy like baseball cards, organizing them according to length. As of July 3, I have almost a complete set in the range of one to 27 words. Looking back on the list now, it's pretty clear why some advanced to become part of the evolutionary picture, while others went the way of the dinosaurs. Here's a quick review of some of the major players in the market:

"Loyalists" (one word): In the aftermath of the first real wave of anti-U.S. attacks, about a month after we declared victory, a few scattered newspapers began experimenting with this one-word characterization, figuring that readers were educated enough by then to know what they were talking about. Previously, the attackers had mostly been "Saddam Hussein loyalists," "Baath party loyalists," "pro-Saddam loyalists," etc. My favorite "loyalist" tab to date, incidentally, is "die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein" (Newark Star-Ledger), which actually recalls another promising favorite, "Saddam-regime die-hards" (American Forces Press Service).

It made a kind of sense that we could drop all of the modifiers and just call the bad guys "loyalists," but when the papers tried that a month or so ago, it somehow came out sounding too Belfast, too Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and it was quickly dropped. I haven't seen "loyalist" standing alone for weeks.

Two other one-word candidates for the job have yet to play themselves out fully: terrorists and Iraqis. I'm actually not sure why the Pentagon didn't go with terrorists from the start. That's what I would have done. If I were in charge, all of Iraq would be filled with terrorists: terrorists demonstrating in the square in Fajullah, terrorists demanding water and electricity, "terrorist elementary schools," "terrorist libraries," "terrorist swimming pools." Had we gone with that from the start, we could have just shot anything that moved and never had to worry. But this insistence on dividing Iraq up into good Iraqis and bad loyalist Iraqis has hopelessly complicated the picture.

Iraqis is a possibility the Arab press is dangerously close to exploring. Already many Arab news services describe the attackers as mere Iraqi fighters (this designation has also appeared on Reuters). Needless to say, that will never work as a long-term solution here in the United States. Not only is it seditious, but it's boring. There are better possibilities to explore:

"Baath Party activists loyal to the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein" (11 words): This was actually a very early designation by the wacky folks at the Sunday Telegraph, but it foreshadowed later developments. It was innovative on several fronts: It told a story (about Saddam being deposed), it was pleasingly long and it made a value judgment about the motives of the attackers, calling them "activists." The whole idea of the anti-U.S. attackers as "activists" was echoed later on by numerous papers that pointed a finger at "remnants of the Baath Party movement," a description that draped Saddam Hussein bureaucrats in the garb of Berkeley Free-Speechers or marchers on Selma.

Needless to say, the whole movement/activist idea never stuck, although the concept of "remnants" definitely has. Remnants, for me, recalls body parts, bits of feet and fingers left after the blast, and this is exactly why this word works so well in this context. Remnants reminds readers that the enemy is part of an extinguished whole, which is why remnants continues to figure in the mix of most descriptions even today.

"Iraqis who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein and Islamic militants from other countries eager to kill Americans" (17 words): From Knight-Ridder services a few weeks back. I like this one not just because of the addition of imported Islamic fighters (there were hints of this even early on), but because those militants were not just militants, but militants eager to kill Americans. Not angry or desperate enough to kill, but actually eager to kill, like a bunch of little bearded, drooling Draculas clawing at the gates.

"Remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, anti-American Islamic fighters coming into Iraq and common criminals" (15 words): This was from CNN a few weeks ago. The addition of "and common criminals" was a major advance in the genre, "criminals" presumably being code for "everybody else." The foundation for a Balzac-ian gallery of human types has been laid; from here it's not hard to see a future in which we find ourselves fighting a narrative tale of the whole developing human race in all its imperfections. All that's missing is a plot to hang it on, and the president himself took the first steps in that direction just last week:

"Former Baath Party and security officials who will stop at nothing to regain their power and their privilege enjoyed under the deposed Hussein dictatorship" (24 words): A hybrid of a Bush quote and the reporting of the American Forces Press Service. By now, with the beginnings of a plot and three main suspects (loyalists, foreign terrorists and criminals) to draw from, we can easily take this Bush formula and expand the description to 50 or 60 words. Here's how I might do it:

"The attacks were carried out by former Baath party officials who will stop at nothing to regain their power and their privilege enjoyed under the deposed Hussein dictatorship, anti-American Islamic militants who are coming in from other countries and are eager to kill Americans; and common criminals seeking to sabotage Iraq's transformation to democracy."

This is still too tight for my tastes. I still see a lot of room to move here:

"Once again stopping at nothing to regain the power and privilege they enjoyed under the deposed Hussein dictatorship, former Baath party officials joined the sufferers of Aarskog syndrome; foreign terrorists who are coming in from other countries and are eager to kill Americans; a brilliant scientist who underwent a dramatic change in character after falling into an acid bath in an accident that left one half of his face disfigured for life; common criminals seeking to undermine Iraq's transformation to democracy; a curious man in a bowler hat who speaks only in short beeps; and the rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard in plotting a series of attacks against American forces currently maintaining order in the free Iraqi state."

That's just one possibility. Believe me, this thing has legs. All I want is a chance. Mr. Rumsfeld, I'm waiting by the phone.