Hating the Palliating

Talk about at a lesson in euphemistic language.

Jeep, the car company owned by GM, just had a commercial on TV advertising its fall deals. Fine. But at the end of the commerical, Jeep reminds customers to partake in the company’s letter writing campaign to "our overseas troops."

Fucking overseas? Give me a break. According to the A.P., the number of American troops killed in Iraq just surpassed the amount of people killed in New York on 9/11.
These troops are more than people who are overseas. My friend Stuey, who's backpacking through Europe and trying to find himself, is "overseas."

What's wrong? using the word Iraq or soldiers or military or figthers isn't palatable? Well not much in war is.

With all the ways to describe USA's might, it's interesting to note that on the home front, and in happy little car commercials, we say "overseas troops."

Any American soldier in Iraq is fighting for his or her life. It's a macabre ordeal fought with weapons that look like something out of H.R. Giger's imagination.

But, then again, do we Americans really care?

The war is so far away, so remote. And that new Jeep Cherokee comes with all leather interior and dual-zone climate control.