"I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war," writes Molly Ivins, (June 8, 2006 http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0608-34.htm) "Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war."

In writing this column I always have difficulty wrestling my perceptions and understandings down to manageable size, nudging them into coherent and connected words, and endowing them with reasonable civilities and challenges for my readers. These past weeks, however, I have been reduced to watching the cursor blink as the physical reality of war in Lebanon came down upon me – human beings and their homes and cities blown to bits; roads, farms, and civilian supplies bombed, ambulances and UN observers deliberately targeted by missiles.

Equally paralyzing has been the torrents, tidal waves, and blizzards of words – abstractions like "terrorism," "prevention," "liberation," "security," "deterrence," "evil" – justifying bombings and massacres, branding persons or populations as worthless, sub-human, or evil – deserving to be massacred, bombed, tortured, or imprisoned – and defining war as "necessary" or "the continuation of politics by other means."

My dictionary defines war as "armed conflict between nations or factions." John Keegan ("War and Our World" 2001, "A History of Warfare" 1993) allows that war takes so many forms and changes so frequently that it is only possible to define it as "collective killing for some collective purpose."

Now consider this definition: "The calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

Um ... that’s not a definition of "war." That’s "terrorism" as defined by the US Department of Defense.

So what do we mean by "war"? Don’t words mean what we do about them in the physical world, as well as denote, signify, represent – things that happen in the physical world?

Right now pundits and politicians are arguing at length over the nice distinction between (terrorists) killing civilians and (soldiers) killing civilians, about how successfully we have provided democracy and security in Iraq, about whether the Israeli attack on Lebanon is "proportionate," and that we should " let Israel finish the job" before seeking a cease-fire.

The "job" is murder. Bush believes, like Ivin’s winger, that murder is an act to be accomplished for success in war. Bush is committed to and practices the same terrorism he claims to be making war on.

Our President, who believes that a fertilized human ovum has a right-to-life as specified in a document written in English in 1776 CE in a small society on a rich continent, also believes that his "war on terrorism" gives him the right to massacre, dispossess, and impoverish human beings anywhere in the world, using the vast military and economic forces at his disposal.

The wars in the Middle East are purely wars of terror – against civilians – in pursuit of political, ideological, or financial goals. There are terrorists on both sides, and the US is, physically, the biggest terrorist of all, deliberately murdering civilians in order to control governments, and arming terrorists or governments the Bush administration favors.

Ivins is right: massacre, murder, is what happens in war, killing is the job of war, the achievement of war, regardless of the abstractions invoked to justify it or the words used to camouflage it.

Most Americans are convinced that what Bush is doing 1) won’t bring democracy, freedom, justice, or peace to the Middle East; 2) isn’t what the people there want; 3) is counterproductive in almost every register; and 4) is morally wrong.

But we go along, hailing as heroes our soldiers who serve and die in war, consigning to hell both the living and the dead of the Middle East, and managing a half-hearted "Oops!" over the civilians killed "collaterally." We call this "civilization."

This is a pataphysical world – a world of the absurd where words mean what a few powerful, wealthy, or ideologically deluded men do about them with bombs and missiles. As long as we accept their definitions as reality, the killing will continue.

John Kenneth Galbraith left his readers with a "sadly relevant fact: "Civilization has made great strides ... But it has also given a privileged position to the development of weapons and ... the reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilized achievement. ... War remains the decisive human failure." (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0715-06.htm)

Words mean what we do about them. What are we going to do about war? What can we do about it? Demand a cease-fire? Demand withdrawal of US forces from Iraq? Demand that our President and Congress stop providing bombs and missiles to other nations? Start talking with one another as real, physical human beings instead of as ‘terrorists’?

All of the above. We can’t take George W. Bush’s word for anything. He commands a sufficient arsenal to destroy the physical world, should he choose to do so.

Before joining Senator John Glenn's Washington staff in 1985, Caroline Arnold was a teacher, founded and ran a successful small business, and served three terms on the Kent (OH) Board of Education. In retirement she grows beans, squash, and potatoes in her garden, is principal cellist of the Stow Symphony, and serves on the boards of Family & Community Services and the Akron Council on World Affairs. Email to: csarnold@neo.rr.com.

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