Appropriate Use of The Term
Use of the term does not appear to have gained currency outside of the limited arena of justification of military action: for example, the U.S. Navy refers to the Korean conflict as the Korean War, and when they refer to police action, they surround the term in scare quotes.
Similarly, a plaque at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial refers to the Vietnam conflict as a war, not a police action.
Use of the term police action is intended to imply either a claim of formal sovereignty or of authority to intervene militarily at a nation's own discretion.
Veterans often display a high degree of disdain for the term "police action," as it somehow implies that their sacrifices were not legitimate and perhaps also that they are not even veterans of a true "war".
Read more about this topic: Police Action
Famous quotes containing the word term:
“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)