war on terror

replace this imprecise term with a description of who is doing what to whom. "Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique" (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post). Peter Beinart (also in the Washington Post) agrees that "war on terror" has always been a flawed term, since terror is a tactic, not an enemy. Historian and writer Howard Zinn said that "the category of 'terrorism' continues to be applied selectively, and in a way that serves the goals of U.S. policies, despite the fact that these very policies often cause or support more human suffering than is caused by the so-called 'terrorists' the United States opposes. Ultimately this leads to operative official definitions of 'terrorism' that are so vague and redundant as to defy logic...." Ross Glover (Collateral Language) points out at that the word "terrorism is so vague, the BBC World Service has stopped using the term altogether." See also war/war on.