" It's a war on an abstract noun"

[cali]

That's how Lewis Lapham described the war on terra yesterday on C-SPAN's WJ. I thought it was such an elegant turn of phrase and so accurate that it deserved its own thread. Lapham's right to challenge the concept that there's a "war on terror". It's a vague 1984 style phrase meant to stir up fear.

[MaineYooper]

1. one could also argue that it's a war on a tactic, not an enemy

How does one go about hunting down and killing a tactic?

[Ready4Change]

2. Yep.

It's like saying that the British fought us Colonials in America because we'd hide in bushes and snipe at them with hunting rifles, rather than stand in orderly ranks in an open field like civilized soldiers. Bull. They fought us because we were resisting the orders of their (and our, at the time) King.

The Boston Tea Party was, in it's day, a terrorist act.

You can't defeat ideas with bullets. Our own history proves that.