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It had to happen.

The Bush Administration has finally done something we at 201k can whole-heartedly support. They've changed the name of the War on Terror to something we can--grammatically, at least--get behind:

From now on, the United States is no longer engaged in a "global war on terror," and instead, we're fighting a "global struggle against violent extremism."

According to officials interviewed by the Times, the name change came about after a series of Bush administration meetings held in January. The meetings caused national security officials to come to grips with the idea notion that fighting terrorism is not only a military endeavor, but that it also includes diplomatic, economic, and political tools. "It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven Hadley, the national security adviser, tells the paper. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative." Also significant: Karen Hughes, the Bush aide known for her sloganeering skills, has just rejoined the administration; the name change, the Times subtly suggests, has Hughes' fingerprints all over it.

Sure, they're changing just the name, not the failing tactics. But at least we're no longer at war with an abstract noun.

We've been bugged by this for a while. Grammatical problems reflect thinking problems. Here's our post from 9/14/2003:

Declaring "war" on an abstract noun--in this case "terror"--may make for great soundbites, but bombing it turns out to be problematic. Ultimately you end up bombing places you think it may be hiding near, but that tends to create more problems than it solves--especially for the innocent people who happen to live in the vicinity.

What you end up with is a global game of "whack-a-mole", the carnival game in which no matter how hard you swing at the mole, it disappears while another one pops up somewhere else. You can turn around and shoot the carnival owner, of course, but then you have to contend with his family. Do you shoot them, too? Then what?

Welcome to "whack-a-mole".

The hard answer, of course, and one that makes for very poor soundbites, is that it's impossible to stop individual acts of terror, especially through conventional warfare. You can no more bomb away "terror" than you can bomb away "sin" or "ugliness" or "murder".

In fact, it's maddeningly hard to stop individual acts of any kind, really. That's why we have prisons full of people, each of whom committed an individual act. You can catch them and punish them, but you can only do so much to stop them in advance--and even that presumes they'll act somewhat rationally while sinning.

Let your mind wander over the myriad possibilities for small-scale terrorist attacks against ordinary Americans going about their daily business. What would stop violent acts by individuals whose aim is to terrorize, and who don't care if they get caught, or even survive?

Nothing. What stops normal people from doing those things is the thinly defined but widely recognized rules of behavior all sane people follow. Occasionally an insane person breaks the rules, and when that happens we're all shocked.

But the terrorists are doing it. They flew planes full of people into buildings full of people. They're sane people (depending on how you define it) doing insane things. Individual acts of madness from individuals who don't care about the consequences to themselves.

You can't declare war on that. And you can't bomb it away, no matter how many bombs you drop. In fact, the more bombs you drop, the worse things get.