What’s in a Name?

Back in World War I, the bad guys were known as “The Huns”. In WWII, the bad guys were the “Japs” or the “Krauts”. In hindsight, not very politically correct. In Korea, they were known as “Reds”. OK, not very original. In Viet Nam, the official designation of the bad guys was “VC” which stood for either Viet Cong or Vietnamese Communists. Pretty descriptive and more politically correct than some of the other names used back then. To the troops, however, the enemy simply became known as “Charlie”.

Over here, there are several official names for the bad guys. Collectively, they are all lumped together as “AIF” which is Anti Iraqi Forces. Within the AIF you have the “AQI”-- Al Qaida in Iraq and “JAM”-- Jaysh al-Mahdi. Very politically correct, but not very easy to say. Instead, they are often known as “Hajjis”. The funny thing is, the only Hajji I know of is from Johnny Quest and he was from India.

I know, I know, a lot of people will be like: “oh don’t say that, you might offend them”. I would imagine that they have more important things to worry about and I’m sure their name for us is equally non-offensive. Besides, what’s in a name?