Looking for the war on terror.

• Author: Howell, Llewellyn D.
• Position: George W. Bush on terrorism

THERE ARE SO MANY PROBLEMS in the Bush Administration's pursuit of terrorists these days that it is difficult to know even where to begin the list, but key among them is the fact that there really is not any war at all on terrorism. You cannot have a war against a concept. That tact did not work with the War on Poverty, nor with the War on Drugs, and it never will go anywhere with terror, either. We do not seem to know who it is we are fighting or what it is we should do to fight them (or it?).

Identifying where it is that we are fighting the War on Terrorism is most of the game. Locating the war should involve finding where it is that terrorists are. They are not in Iraq. The fighting there is not a War on Terrorism. Pres. Bush continually refers to everyone not on our side in Iraq as "the terrorists." In this ongoing effort to achieve simple common denominators, the President is glossing over the obvious complexity of who is at war in Iraq while misidentifying who our troops should be fighting, helping create the very havoc that fosters terrorism and missing an opportunity to combat actual terrorists. Is it any wonder that we are unable to win the war in Iraq while failing to make any inroads on the spread of terrorism?

Pres. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should have started with a definition of terrorism instead of using it as a stupifyingly simple pejorative. From Sept. 11, 2001, on, the President has confused terrorism with revolution, rebellion, ethnic conflict, anarchy, and war.

In What Terrorists Want, Louise Richardson draws on her decades-long study of terrorist movements to define it with seven components. First, a terrorist is politically (or religiously) inspired. Second, a terrorist act involves violence. Third, the point of a terrorist act is to send a message--that is, induce terror, not to kill the enemy. Fourth, in doing this, the act and the victim have symbolic significance. The psychological impact has to be greater than the physical act. Fifth, terrorism is an act of individuals or groups, not nation-states. If a state commits such an act, it is war. Sixth, in a terrorist act, the victim of the violence and the target audience that the terrorist is trying to reach are not the same. Terrorists want to inculcate fear in a much larger population than just the few (even 3,000) that they can kill. Terrorists' objectives are tar beyond the reach of weapons and often are multidimensional (political, religious...