AddieStan

Though she's hardly the first to contest the use of this oxymoronic term, the president's speech last night demands a return to the critique. Particularly maddening to your cybertrix is the term's acceptance by many in the news media and in the political arena, as if it were the proper name for a conflict. The term "War on Terror" is a clever construction by Republican rhetoriticians. While nurturing the post-911 fear that lives in so many of us, the phrase paradoxically conveys the idea that we are fighting to stamp out that fear. Think about it, though. Terror is an emotion--not a fighting force, nor even a battle technique. Terrorism, on the other hand, is a strategy/technique used by the enemy to manipulate outcomes that are essentially political in nature. War is, by its very nature, terrifying. Hence, a "War on Terror" is a clever bit of newspeak. By appropriating the administration's sinister rhetoric, the news media do the president's...

Given the choice, last night, between jamming with some jazz men or listening to the president offer his latest rationale for why we're in Iraq, your blogstress chose the jam. Which doesn't mean she has nothing to say about the president's speech, if only to remark on the utter shamelessness of the man. While president spun out his latest half-truths about why Americans are dying in the fertile crescent, he was no less craven in his exploitation of 9-11 than was Karl Rove in his slander against Democrats last week. Yo, prez, the reason we're fighting terrorists in Iraq is because you virtually invited them there. But you know that. One can only hope that the American people will show themselves to be something better than than the dolts their president apparently thinks them to be.