There’s a very good and instructive piece in today’s Journal on the evolution of Hezbollah as a tenacious military operation. But there was one line which really shows the impoverishment of the language when discussing terrorism:

While its fighters remain guerrillas, in the south of Lebanon they are dug in like a conventional military, operating from an extensive network of reinforced underground bunkers and tunnels. The architect of its military infrastructure is Imad Mugniyah, a figure so secretive that the only known photograph of him is more than 20 years old and was taken before he is believed to have changed his appearance with plastic surgery. He is said to run Hezbollah’s terrorist arm, the Islamic Jihad Organization, as a virtually autonomous unit.

It’s “terrorist arm”? I understand talking about Hezbollah’s political arm. But when you refer to Hezbollah’s terrorist arm it sounds pretty redundant to me. How about its “sister terrorist division” or something like that?