You Cannot Have a War on a Verb!

The first thing I said when the Iraqi War came out, What about you people?

an abstract noun. When someone "commits terrorism", commit is the verb.

And a new vocab word goes on my sheet.

Whatreally alarms me about President Bush's "war on terrorism" is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? It's rather like bombing murder.

Imagine if Bush had said: "We're going to bomb murder wherever it lurks. We are going to seek out the murderers and the would-be murderers, and bomb any government that harbours murderers."

The other thing that worries me about Bush and Blair's "war on terrorism" is: how will they know when they've won it? With most wars, you can say you've won when the other side is either all dead or surrenders. But how is terrorism going to surrender?

It's hard for abstract nouns to surrender. In fact it's very hard for abstract nouns to do anything at all of their own volition - even trained philologists can't negotiate with them. It's difficult to find their hide-outs, useless to try to cut off their supplies.

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