What in the World Is a War on Terror?

Robert Higgs has written what I have been thinking for a while, namely:

"The war on terror," he [President Bush] insists,"is not a figure of speech." Well, I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but that is precisely what it is. How can one go to war against"terror," which is a state of mind? Even if the president were to take more care with his language and to speak instead of a"war on terrorism," the phrase still could not be anything more than a metaphor, because terrorism is a form of action available to virtually any determined adult anywhere anytime. War on terrorism, too, can be only a figure of speech.

The Bush image-makers have so little regard for the American people that I’m sure they came up with the label “war on terror” because it has the fewest syllables. That it's meaningless was irrelevant to their purposes.