If there is a more Orwellian, pernicious, dishonest, and hollow rhetorical phrase in the history of American politics than "the war on terror," I don't know what it is.
The phrase positively reeks of Pentagon PR jingoism, doublespeak, smoke and mirrors.
It's impossible to take the phrase seriously, and it's high time Democrats deconstructed this phrase--to reveal it for the empty rhetorical shell that it is--at every available opportunity. Failure to do so, or worse yet attempts to use the phrase (as in, "we have a better plan for the war on terror") to Democratic advantage, is a missed political opportunity...
Why am I so hung up on this phrase?
Because to me it is the kernal of Bush's duplicitousness:
the phrase connotes a shadowy enemy that can never be vanquished (a war "not to end in our lifetimes," according to Cheney), and it is a phrase used as a blank check (a flag wrapper) for anything, no matter how unconstitutional, counterproductive, or dishonest, the President wants to do.
Even during the height of the Cold War, the USSR was an actual place one could visit. But now that the War on Terrorism has replaced the almost 50-year long War on Communism as the raison d'etre for the defense establishment (see the new movie "Why We Fight" on this), the replacement war is even more rhetorically devoid of reality: after all, what we know about the enemy comes almost entirely from the scripts of the very powers that want us to remain in a state of total and unending fear.
Democrats must alert all Americans to the way in which this phrase is being used (is designed to be used) by the Bush administration as a catch-all for its war profiteering, its failed policies, and its dishonesty.
The phrase must go.