http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020422&s=trb042202
TRB FROM WASHINGTON Word Play by Peter Beinart Post date 04.12.02
For leftists, economics determines international relations; for realists, power does. But the extraordinary thing about American foreign policy since September 11 is the extent to which it has been shaped by language. In the terrible days after the World Trade Center fell, the Bush administration grasped for words that would capture America's resolve. And it came up with "war on terrorism." Through endless repetition, the phrase was fleshed out. "Terrorism" meant violence by individuals or groups (but not governments) against civilians, no matter what the cause. "War" didn't connote a merely military effort, but it suggested a broad struggle with the urgency, and Manichaean clarity, of a battlefield campaign.
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Does Israel have the same right to defend itself against suicide bombers in Tel Aviv as the United States has to defend itself against suicide hijackers in New York? Is an attack on the Indian parliament as evil as an attack on Congress? Absolutely. But the question isn't moral; it's strategic. And strategically, Israel's and India's wars against terrorism differ radically from America's because Israel and India aren't merely fighting a terrorist network; they're fighting a people. And a people can be militarily occupied, but they can't be militarily crushed. The moral right to respond to terror with single-minded, overwhelming force doesn't make such a response successful. And in the end, if a government's response to terror doesn't stop future terror, the moral clarity it provides is cold comfort indeed.