(Up to: Language To Control Fears )

A thought. Or rather (at first), some questions.

Are we at war? Or are we the subjects of terrorism? Is it indeed possible to be both? What I mean is, is it possible to actually conduct a "War Against Terror"?

Certainly, no-one in their right mind would concede that we are, in actual fact, "at war", in the traditional Western sense... could they? After all, war has rules. War has to be declared, between countries. War demands certain rights, like a game. Some might say that war is a game. Some claim that "war is just terrorism on a bigger budget", but in reality there are many more intricacies at work during a war, although I suspect most of them occur before and after the bloody violence.

If we're not at war, then terrorists are just that. But then, shouldn't we call it something else other than war, for all the connotations that the word "war" implies? If we are at war, but just a new, evolved kind of war, then surely the terrorists aren't terrorists, but rather "combatants", or maybe "new-age militia". In a war, bombing is fine, whether it be suicidal or not. "Suicide bombers" would be called "Kamikaze soldiers" instead. I suspect that those people subjected to prolonged bombing runs in the first and second world war wouldn't disagree if they were described as "terrified", a psychological scarring that seems to be all part and parcel of one war, and the empathic defence of use of force in another. So there's definitely a line to cross before plain violence becomes out-and-out war. However, in the interests of those whose war it is, this line is now increasingly fuzzier and fuzzier; we are marketed both a state of war, and a state of non-war, selected at any one moment according to the whims and necessities of the peddlars.

And so I think we are stuck at a junction. Behind us, we have the "gentleman's" war, the lines set out by a "civilised" world that saw the only way to victory as gargantuan masses of troops, tactics and blood. The rules we follow are political and agreed by those with less need for them now.

We see the full circle of infliction now - the greatest superpower on Earth is struggling to control regions despite the almost comedic deficit in arms budgeting, and the one-way flow of weapons from one side to the other. The rules and the toys we have developed for "war" are suddenly the victims of the infinitely more fundamental desire for pure damage, damning any "rules" that some suited chaps had shaken hands over so many years ago.

The "war on terror" has been won already, in abundance. Those that control the power are safe behind borders. They have plans, and those plans are long term. For the future, a handful of lives is nothing, and the power of supposed terror is equally nothing - a few years or decades of niggling death can be swept under the carpet when placed next to international supremacy and ideological sustainability. So the leaders have nothing to be worried about, and the terrorists are fighting a losing battle.

But we are in some kind of "war" nonetheless. People continue to die. Others continue to seek control, one way or another. Given the overwhelming superiority of one nation in the field of traditional warfare, small scale tactics are the obvious way forward, if one is to have any hope of victory, however small. But we are in a no-man's land, of regulation, of ethics and of accountability. "War" has been declared, but the rules are being made up as we go along. Rules covering behaviour, such as the Geneva convention, have yet to be decided, simply because we are being sold the battle as something new, something different.

Ahead of us lies two paths - one of formality and civilisation, and one of continued doublespeak. We either decide whether we are in a serious, winnable firefight or not, and set out our own rules accordingly, or we settle into a never-ending turmoil, circular in nature and unchecked on an international level. For without our own rules, who is to trust the intentions of those that "fight"?

N.B. "Doublespeak", whilst sounding Orwellian, is never actually mentioned in '1984'.