All he had to say was, "Humanitarian mission," a softer but every bit as sweeping a term as "War."
For instance the United States, in league with allies, was eventually incited to the magnificent humanitarian missions of 1939-1945, which very much resembled a very big war, but that was merely a brutal mission in which by unavoidably brutal means we literally saved humanity.
A stretch? You bet. Yet stretched it could be by accomplished semanticists.
The preceding and direct cause of that mid-century mission was labeled "The Great War," mostly because it was everything but. That 1914-1918 global bloodbath was an awful exercise in diplomatic rigidity and military stupidity and colonial-territorialist squabbling and some of the poorest international leadership the world has ever witnessed, and for those reasons it was rightly called a "war," even if greatness had nothing to do with it. Indeed, the war was so stupid and so wasteful it required heaps of propagandistic humanitarian humbug to save it: the Kaiser, sans our noble intervention, would soon impale every last Anglo-Saxon babe in arms and rape every worthy white woman; To arms, To arms, for Heaven's sake, To arms!
For that matter, he could have gussied it up in Studs Terkel terms and labeled our mission a "Good War," which, when compared to its global predecessor or, say, the wanton and mindless slaughter of the 30 Years War or the 100 Years War or the serial Crusades or the legendary Trojan War, was about as "good" as a war gets.
He could have even gone ecclesiastical on us by clasping his hands and bending his head upwards and pronouncing solemnly that we are in a "Just War." You don't like that, fellow? Then you can take it up with God's press agents, Tom Aquinas and Augie.
All of these options were available. But when your paycheck comes from a humdinger of a title like "Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications," then Lordy Lord you had best communicate strategically and with a bureaucratic flourish that awes.
And that's just what Ben Rhodes, the aforementioned DNSASC, did, when asked what this thing is.
Our good, just, humanitarian but thankfully Ungreat mission is in fact "a military operation," said Ben, but it's a "limited" one that soon will slide to that only of "a support role." Furthermore, we're there merely to "protect" innocent lives and "[avert] a humanitarian crisis."
Well done, Ben. Now stop. Stop. STOP! But no, that dagnabbit DNSASC thing got the better of him; he felt compelled to earn that paycheck and glorify in that title. So off he went: "Obviously that involves kinetic military action.... So it’s not a war; it’s a kinetic military action that is time-limited and contribution-limited on the front end."
Since everyone else in the blogosphere and on cable TV and in radio is already making fun of poor Ben, I raise this issue here only to publicly confirm one of my narrow but incontrovertible theories of human psychology: There are some people on whom a fancy title should never be bestowed.