AUSTIN -- Since we have declared war on a noun, we are now by
definition in the definition business. The shortest version of our
definitional problem, as we see in attacks from India to Israel, is that one
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's, writes in a scathing
essay, "We might as well be sending the 101st Airborne Division to conquer
lust, annihilate greed, capture the sin of pride." Since President Bush has
given us his own somewhat exuberant definition -- "We go forth to defend
freedom, and all that is good and just in the world" -- we can only hope
there will be no further mission creep.
Hendrik Hertzberg, in a New Yorker essay, makes the useful point
that while Israelis kill Palestinians and Palestinians kill Israelis, it is
wrong to imply moral equivalence: "Innocent Palestinian civilians, including
children, have indeed been killed, often carelessly, and that is bad enough.
But they have not been 'targeted.' For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, however, the
killing of innocent Israeli civilians, including children, is deliberate,