Say that again!

It was a statement George W. Bush made on June 28. Announcing the handover in Iraq, Bush said: 8216;8216;The long-term defeat of terror wi...

It was a statement George W. Bush made on June 28. Announcing the handover in Iraq, Bush said: 8216;8216;The long-term defeat of terror will happen when freedom takes hold in the broader Middle East8217;8217;.

In the New York Times, Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, picked out 8216;8216;defeat of terror8217;8217; and advanced a thesis. Much has changed since September 11, he said. At that time, Bush had declaimed: 8216;8216;We stand together to win the war against terrorism8217;8217;. Over the following year, Bush described the enemy as 8216;8216;terrorism8217;8217; twice as often as 8216;8216;terror8217;8217;. But in White House speeches over the next year, the proportions have been reversed. The major newspapers have also taken the cue 8212; they have shifted from terrorism to terror.

Terror is not simply an abbreviation of terrorism, wrote Nunberg, it signals a broad linguistic shift. It draws upon a different set of meanings. Terror is more 8216;8216;amorphous8217;8217;, more 8216;8216;elastic8217;8217; than terrorism. 8216;8216;It evokes both the actions of terrorists and the fear they are trying to engender8230; it can be applied to states as well as to insurgent groups8230; Even if Mr Hussein can8217;t actually be linked to the attacks of September 11, 8216;terror8217; seems to connect them etymologically8217;8217;.

Far away, in Egypt8217;s Al Ahram Weekly, film critic Samir Farid was tracking the images conjured by another term in Bush8217;s speech. The 8216;8216;broader Middle East8217;8217; or the 8216;8216;Greater Middle East8217;8217;, he wrote accusingly, is just another western label for the Arab world. 8216;8216;By lumping this world together with Iran and Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel, those who coined this term are hoping to dilute history. They are trying to take the leverage from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia and hand it over politically to Iraq, economically to Israel and militarily to Turkey8217;8217;.

Farid warned against a US design to rearrange a variety of Arab and Asian cultures in a framework the west finds easier to manage and use. The real fear, he argued, is this: 8216;8216;Unless we come together, we may soon be living in the Greater Middle East, not in the Arab world.8217;8217;

Many a slip

India8217;s budget is receiving more hard-eyed treatment the week after. The Economist put it under the scanner. And sounded terribly underwhelmed.

P. Chidambaram8217;s budget may be 8216;8216;balanced8217;8217; it said, but it does little to advance reform. The magazine blamed the untidy coalition Chidambaram is part of, particularly the communists, for his failure to meet the expectations of 8216;8216;keener reformers8217;8217; 8212; on privatisation, subsidies and labour reform.

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It noted the new emphasis on agriculture and rural areas: 8216;8216;Politically astute, no doubt, but possibly not the stuff of which a new Asian tiger is made.8217;8217;

Blame 8216;them8217;

Two high-level inquiries into intelligence failures over Saddam Hussein8217;s supposed illegal weapons announced their findings. In Britain, Tony Blair accepted 8216;8216;full personal responsibility8217;8217; for 8216;8216;the way the issue was presented and, therefore, for any errors made8217;8217;. In the US, as NYT columnist Maureen Dowd noted, Bush took 8216;8216;full personal irresponsibility8217;8217;.

But those were minor differences. The culprit, according to both investigations, appeared to be the same one. And he is not an individual.

Lord Butler8217;s report went out of its way to insist that no individuals could be blamed for the misleading contents of the notorious 8216;8216;September dossier8217;8217;; its failings were 8216;8216;collective8217;8217;. In the US, they said that the Senate Intelligence Committee also pointed its finger at 8216;8216;groupthink8217;8217;.

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In the New York Times, columnist Barbara Ehrenreich lamented the dwindling of any thinking in the US that doesn8217;t qualify for the prefix 8216;8216;group8217;8217;. Conformity has become as American as apple pie and prisoner abuse, she said. Especially since 9/11.

8216;8216;One thousand coalition soldiers have died because the CIA was so eager to go along with the emperor8217;s delusion he was actually wearing clothes8217;8217;, Ehrenreich wrote with a fine longing about the shaman,the wise woman and the 8216;8216;king of fools8217;8217; in the European carnival tradition who was allowed to mock the authorities, if only for a day or two.

In a secular world

Is organised politics nudging organised religion to cross a crucial line, in what is possibly the most churched society in the world? The Bush-Cheney campaign is reportedly flirting with this danger.

The campaign has directed congregation volunteers to perform a list of 8216;8216;duties8217;8217;, starting with submitting local church membership directories to party headquarters so that the faithful can be exhorted to vote in November. At least one newspaper editorial expressed dismay at this 8216;8216;ham-handed proselytising8217;8217;.

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Religion and state and the blurring lines between the two are the subject of public discussion in secular Britain as well. Home Secretary David Blunkett wants to make it illegal to stir up religious hatred. Commentators are worried about where the line may be drawn. There are whispers about a 8216;8216;grand bargain8217;8217; between the government and British Muslims, many of whom have deserted the Labour party, to isolate the extremists.