The need to reset our conceptual and rhetorical framework for Terrorism

Glenn Greenwald (who I am steadily coming to appreciate more and more for his clear analysis and reasonable politics) has a great post today, "Helen Thomas deviates from the terrorism script," talking about the implications of the following video and what it means when our government refuses to engage in any serious or intelligent discussion of terrorism:



Then over at the National Journal's National Security Experts' forum Michael Brenner has an interesting short comment about the meaning of the words we choose to discuss terrorism and our efforts to combat it. The money quote:

"Much of the verbal confusion stems from the use of words as proper nouns that are in fact pronouns – functionally speaking. Al-Qaidi, the outstanding example, has multiple antecedent proper nouns. Is the reference to Osama bin-Laden and his cohort holed up somewhere in North Waziristan or Quetta or Karachi? Is it to everyone who calls himself al-Qaidi from Mali to Bali? What exactly are we trying to do – get bin-Laden, destroy al-Qaidi in AfPak, liquidate all self-declared members, prevent it arising Phoenix like from the ashes of our explosives? Do relatives of those we kill, related or not to people we have estimated to be al-Qaidi, and who might become adherents to the al-Qaidi creed, count in the equation? Is our target al-Qaidi in the past, present and/or future?"