Epic Fury to Enduring Freedom: What war names reveal about power

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched a joint operation against Iran. US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran” Trump told the Iranian people, “Your hour of freedom is at hand…when we are finished taking over your government, it will be yours to take.”The US Operation was named “Epic Fury", while Israel named its mission “Lion's Roar”.

There is some intricate reflection of war psychology if you trace the naming of the war and the war itself. The name of a war, for the majority of the times is the story that the country likes to tell its people and the world to rationalise its actions. For example, India's “Operation Sindoor” was a response to the punitive action that wiped out the vermilion and widowed Indian woman. Similarly, Israel's Lion's Roar clarifies its motive; the lion was at the centre of ancient Zoroastrianism and later adopted by the Iranian Shas, and it also had ancient Jewish symbolism, the lion of Judah. US operations naming has evolved over time. In Afghanistan, it was Enduring Freedom. In Iraq, it was Operation Iraqi Freedom, then in Libya, it was Operation Odyssey Dawn. Then came the Trump era Operation Southern Spear in Venezuela, Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran. Now, “Epic Fury”- a name so disconnected from history or reality that it sounds like an energy drink or a Pokémon's power move.

Moral Legitimacy

Operation Enduring Freedom, launched in 2001, was a coherent propaganda. The US was attacked on its own soil, at the epitome of global capitalism. The rationale was clean “war on terror”. The perpetrators were sheltered by the Taliban, and who else will deliver justice if not the US, as “Freedom” was the most enticing commodity the US was selling to everyone. The name was the PR of US and Western values, portraying themself as the liberator.

Rhetorical Crack

Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003, the early success of the Afghan war and consistent lobbying from various individuals and institutions like Tony Blair, Benjamin Netanyahu, Dick Cheney, neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the US entered into another war in Baghdad. The threat was supposedly so imminent that there was no time left for the United Nations. Except there was no evidence of chemical weapons, no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The first crack appeared here; the name did not justify the rationale.

Symbolic Incoherence

Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya, 2011. The names sounded accidental, no relation to the war. Odyssey means uncertain, endless journey, and Dawn suggests a new beginning. The two are self-contradictory to each other. In 2009, as chair of the African Union, Gaddafi proposed the Gold Dinar, a gold-backed currency for the entire continent, a threat to the Petrodollar system. The United Nations, the European Union, and the US sanctioned Gaddafi, and soon NATO started supplying weapons to stir up a resistance, and then the rationale was to save the Libyan people from a dictator.

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The Trump era and performative aggression

Trump's Midnight Hammer, Southern Spear, and Epic Fury are not selling freedom, not even pretending to; they are selling force as its own justification. Venezuela tried to reason with Trump, and so did Iran. The rationale is similar; Trump wants to liberate the people of Iran and Venezuela. But the US doesn't care to hide its intentions anymore. The US openly admits it wants Venezuelan oil, and the US openly claims it is stirring up protests in Iran, which it was hiding in Libya.

Plot hole revealing themselves?

Overtime agents within the network are revealing the plot. The 2010 WikiLeaks by Julian Assange- the 93,000-page Afghan War Diary- the Task Force 373 revealed the brutal crimes of the US military in Afghanistan. The most horrifying one being the “Kill Teams”, a group within the US army which killed civilians and collected their body parts as a “trophy”. Assange noted that the war was used to siphon funds to a “transnational security elite”; the goal was not to end the war but its endless continuation. After 20 years US withdrew from Afghanistan and spent trillions of dollars, thousands of death and the return of the Taliban, it didn't justify the plot it was setting up.

Then the Iraqi war and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein created a power vacuum and fertile ground for ISIS, leaving thousands of trained Sunni soldiers and bureaucrats unemployed and resentful. Groups of security forces were tortured in Camp Bucca before converting themselves into the Islamic State of Iraq, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The same happened in Libya, a power vaccum no succession plan and a viper's nest of militias, many of these militias now control detention centres, where migrants are brought and sold for forced labour.

What a name reveal!

Military operation names, though, seem arbitrary, but they are psychological framing device to reflect consent and coercion. The US tries to rationalise the war as liberating people. Contrary to the framing evidence everywhere points differently

Wherever the US intervened, especially in West Asia, it resulted in destabilising outcomes. Operation Enduring Freedom knew what it was selling. As time evolved, the name get louder and the rationale get more quite and foggy. Operation Epic Fury seems like the group stopped thinking about selling it. It reflects a war aesthetic; the rhetoric moved from selling “freedom” to selling “dominance”.