Among the instant clichés that sprang up after 9/11 was the notion that a “war on terror” is a meaningless concept. “It is misleading to talk of a ‘war on terrorism,’” sniffed the distinguished British historian Correlli Barnett only last month. “‘Terrorism’ is a phenomenon . . . You cannot in logic wage war against a phenomenon, only against a specific enemy.”
Most of us warmongers were inclined, if only in private, to agree with Professor Barnett. We assumed “war on terror” was a polite evasion, the compassionate conservative’s preferred euphemism for what was really going on—a war on militant Islam, which would have been harder to square with all those White House Ramadan photo-ops and the interminable presidential speeches about Islam as a “religion of peace.”
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