To affect the will of the adversary, Rapid Dominance will apply a variety of approaches and techniques to achieve the necessary level of Shock and Awe at the appropriate strategic and military leverage points. […] Flowing from the primary concentration on affecting the adversary's will to resist through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe to achieve strategic aims and military objectives, four characteristics emerge that will define the Rapid Dominance military force.

WWE and WCW gussied up the ritual with a lot of shock-and-awe pyrotechnics and the most innovative use of video graphics this side of MTV. Not so Extreme Championship Wrestling.

The shock and awe that a human being could inspire navigating a stage with such effortless yet almost supernatural command (not for nothing did legends Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly congratulate Michael [Jackson] on his dancing) vaulted Jackson and Thriller to a new level of prominence.

Photos, film, documentation of the city [[Unsupported titles/`lsqb`Hiroshima#English|[Hiroshima]], Japan] had been confiscated and censored almost immediately after Japan surrendered, and the only indelible image of the bombing was the power of the bomb itself: the "shock and awe" version of the mushroom cloud.

One expression above all others has become associated with the invasion of Iraq – "shock and awe". Developed at the Pentagon in the mid-1990s, "shock and awe" was a doctrine designed to leave the enemy so demoralised and disoriented that its will to resist crumbled. In popular parlance it has come to mean the application of overwhelming force, the effective obliteration of the enemy, and for many the term "shock and awe" has come to epitomise the crudeness of the American assault on Iraq.

In defense of moderation, he proposed simply stomping out religious radicals. (In American terms: shock and awe, rather than hearts and minds.)

[The surveillance capitalists] specialize in displays of instrumentarianism’s unique brand of shock and awe, leaving onlookers dazed, uncertain, and helpless.

“This is ‘shock and awe,’” he said. “Truss, Kwarteng, and the people around them think they had to act quickly. The longer they wait, the more the resistance will build up.”.

He was a young soldier still in the great battle of life, not used to see his fellow-combatants drop down by his side; and he felt shocked and awed.
A coincidental use of the term before it was coined in 1996 as the name of the military doctrine.]

That's why good strategists know when to stop shocking and awing: when to begin consolidating the benefits these strategies have provided. The classic example is Otto von Bismarck, who set new standards for shock and awe by provoking three wars—against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870—all with a view to clearing the way for the unification of Germany.

It was one thing to hear talk of protests and war resistance back home, but when I saw it first hand, just a few feet from my bed, I was shocked and awed by the seriousness of some of the guys who had decided not to participate in this war anymore.

[H]e descends into ferrying drugs carefully planted in carcasses from an abattoir, and is eventually trained to be a killer. The violence, when it comes, shocks and awes because the beauty of the preceding scenes has had a hypnotic hold on the viewer.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iran are both fought in defense of the manliness of "America." […] President [George W.] Bush is reelected on a platform of never changing his mind, never reconsidering a decision once taken, and never worrying about what others might think or feel in relation to U.S. actions globally. Since this model of national sovereignty in the face of a foreign threat leaves little room for worrying about individual lives at home, victims of national disasters are subjected to an unimaginably callous carelessness. And the events in nature that shock and awe the senses are used as excuses for doing away with those minimal environmental protections that still constrain the fossil fuel industry.

[M]ost weapon sounds (gun reports, rockets in flight, detonations, etc.) are not just big but absolutely vast, commanding attention, intimidating, shocking and aweing large populations dispersed over large areas.

Shock and awe

Meaning

Noun

Verb

Rhymes