As George Orwell so aptly illustrated in his sci-fi classic 1984, words matter. Direct and control the language people use and their minds will soon follow.

Barack Obama has long been keen to keep America’s mind off the threat of global terror. For the past month, the Obama administration has jettisoned the phrase “Global War on Terror” in favor of ”Global Contingency Operation.”

Somehow — and it’s not clear how — this language preference has trickled down to the Pentagon, so that now not even warfighters are supposed to call the terror war what it is. Fox News reports:

The Obama administration has ordered an end to use of the phrase “Global War on Terror,” a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

In a memo sent this week from the Defense Department’s office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’”.

A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, from whom the direction reportedly came, told the Post there was no guidance given from the agency and that it was merely the “opinion of a career civil servant.”

A Pentagon spokesman said there was no memo or specific directive instructing officials to stop using the ‘Global War on Terror’ phrase but acknowledged that the department has officially adopted ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ as the new term for the war.

 WORLD’s Emily Belz yesterday reported on Obama’s newspeak:

Obama administration rhetorical alternatives are misleading, said Cully Stimson, who served in the Pentagon during the Bush administration. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano refused to use the word “terrorism” in her testimony to Congress, saying instead “man-caused disasters.” Democrats often say global warming is a “man-caused disaster,” Stimson pointed out.

“I would expect that she would not use that silly expression to a family member who suffered the loss of a loved one to an IED explosion,” Stimson said. “Terrorists are terrorists.”

The softening of terminology, he added, fits with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “soft power” strategy, which emphasizes diplomacy more than the previous administration did. At the end of the day, Stimson said, “you can call it cherry pie, but it’s a war.”

In my long experience with government employment, career civil servants, especially Pentagon workers, are not prone to issue dictates, particularly in the name of the president, without a corroborating stack of CYA memos.

It will be interesting to see whether the Obama administration corrects the opinion of this “career civil servant” — or whether the civil servant was acting on a not-so-subtle “suggestion” from on high.