Update: Government’s naming transparency stumbles yet again.

A few weeks ago we talked about all the “accidental” naming pitfalls of a military mission named Odyssey Dawn, mainly how it sounded like a commitment to a war the length of which makes most Americans cringe.

But the Pentagon assured us, via spokesman for U.S. Africa Command Eric Elliot, that nicknames for military exercises or operations are chosen by following instructions carefully laid out in the Defense Department naming policy and are not based on any specific meaning. Essentially, they are selected by chance and edited for propriety. According to the Pentagon, officials are even instructed to select titles that don’t “express a degree of hostility” or are “offensive to good taste or derogatory to a particular group, sect, or creed.”

So, we were assuaged.

But then last week happened: Operation Geronimo. Now, good taste aside, what the hell happened to the names being created by chance? I thought the pentagon filled a bucket with Screaming Eagle-themed magnetic poetry, emptied it into the Name Making Machine, had Panetta crank a giant key, and out popped a perfectly meaningless mash up of by-chance patriotism.

“Geronimo” was no accident! The guy was a singularly cunning escape artist who managed to evade American arrest for more than thirty years. He also happened to have major issues with American culture, namely its penchant for unapologetic unsettling of western land. Remind you of anyone?

But even if it does, what were they thinking? That naming policy sounded like a helpful reference guide, perhaps a reread is in order. Way to choose a name that not only violates the naming strategy you told Americans about last month, but pisses off a community already marginalized by thoughtless public memory.

After a very public chastising by the Native American community culminating in a Senate Commission on Indian Affairs talk led by Geronimo’s grandson, the US government quickly surrendered, apparently heading back to Panetta for the quick retroactive replacement: “Operation Neptune’s Spear.”

Hmm. Ocean god whose wrath leaves rivals forever entombed at the bottom of the ocean. Right, totally random.