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War of words is hurting
war on terror

This must be what they call "a clash of cultures": Religious fanatics try to take the world hostage by blowing up innocent citizens while western news organizations worry whether they should refer to killers as "terrorists."

The "terrorist-like" people are waging a holy war while the Sensitive Abstruse Progressives (SAPs) are waging a grammatical one. We argue over word usage while they take hostages, cut off heads and blow up London.

I'm not sure what the sudden aversion to using the term "terrorist" is. But a Canadian Broadcasting Co. executive banned the word from use in connection with whoever is doing those bombing thingies in London. The BBC flirted with banning the word, too.

The argument is that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." But that's just not true. The people blowing up subways in London and killing Iraqi citizens with car bombs are not fighting for freedom. They are fighting to take away women's right to work, go to school and vote. They are fighting to establish governments run by tyrannical religious clerics. They are fighting against democracy, against science, against history and against freedom. And they are doing it by killing civilians to terrorize the world. To get technical, they are psychotically religious depraved murderous worms. But "terrorist" is shorter.

I CONCEDE THAT President Bush muddied the verbal water when he declared a "War on Terror." You can't win a war on terror any more than you can win a war against hate or stupidity. Religious fanatics have always used terror. The difference is in the old days they had long curved knives and today they have shoulder rocket launchers and exploding apparel.

To be more precise, some people choose to call the terrorists (my word) Islamofascists. That's a mouthful. And I guess it's supposed to differentiate the exploding kind of Muslim from the regular kind. I'm not sure what kind of terrorist Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVay was but he likely was a Episcopaliofascist. Or Baptistofascist. Or maybe an Agnosticofascist.

FOX News always refers to "suicide bombers" as "homicide bombers." Why? "Suicide bomber" is a pretty good description of someone who kills others while bombing himself to death.

A "homicide bomber" could be anyone who bombs other people, whether he bombs himself along with them or not. Timothy McVay was a "homicide bomber." It would have saved us a lot of money in court costs if he had stayed in the truck and become a "suicide bomber."

The point is that we are getting hung up on word play when we should be concentrating on capturing or killing the idiots seeking to spread terror through the use of random violence against innocent people. I say to-MAY-toe, you say to-MAH-toe. I say terrorist, you say unfortunate brain-washed young man with poor verbal skills and a dynamite smoking jacket. When it comes to the battle of words, let's call the whole thing off.