DOES THE JARGON OF THE "WAR ON TERROR" ENLIGHTEN OR CONFUSE?

I have always been sensitive to words that lose their functional meanings and instead become insults or terms of condemnation. The world "liberal" comes to mind. Whatever the legacy of conservative rule in the United States may be the demonization of the term "liberal" is one of them.

Will the already, we are told, historic Presidency of Barrack Obama embrace the term "liberal" or will the legacy of conservative demonizing the term continue to rule the minds of those who many of us hope will be liberal? Anyway what does liberal mean? The meaning is lost once the term is primarily used to condemn and shut down any real dialogue and any real liberalism!

The term "terrorism" has a certain utility. Sometimes people use the term to mean something specific and clear, like a particular tactic or form of warfare. Yet most of the time the term is used in a way that confuses. The "War on Terror" is one ridiculous example. Terror is not terrorism! I can be terrified by anything and even though some scholars have actually been goofey enough to define "terrorism" as anything that frightens or terrorizes someone that definition is obviously absurd.

Or consider how the term Al Qaeda is used to refer to anyone who sets off a bomb and shares a certain religious identity. Yet, as we now seem to have discovered in India Kashmiri-Pakistani group was behind the attacks in Mumbai. It isn't AQ. Lashkar Al Taiba was deployed like Bin Laden to the war against the Russians decades ago. Then the Pakistani government sent them to fight in Kashmir. Now for whatever reason they murdered a hundred civilians in Mumbai. But it is another group, not AQ.

And what about the "connection" between this or that group or individual and Al Qaeda? What does "connection" signify? What is a connection. I have a connection with Muhammed Ali, I walked past him as a small child and he said HI! What does such a connection mean, not much.

Then we are told that all people are a few degrees, perhaps six degrees separated from one another. That is to say that a link of six people in a chain of acquaintances can link anyone up to just about anyone else. Such a connection is therefore commonplace and hardly worth mentioning. So when I the term "connection" used without any facts or any explanation I am pretty skeptical about the usefulness of the statement. indeed, such a use of the term "connection" is usually misleading.

Incompetent, ignorant and manipulative folks like to confuse and polarize with terminology. Hopefully we can try to use these terms that are so polarizing and infused with emotion in a responsible way if at all.