"Terrorism": The World Itself Is Dangerous

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Special Report

The greatest threat to world peace today is clearly "terrorism"-not the behavior to which the word is applied, but the word itself.

For years, people have recited the truisms that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" and that "Terrorism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder." With the world's sole superpower declaring an open-ended, worldwide "war on terrorism," however, the notorious subjectivity of this word is no longer a joke.

It is no accident that there is no agreed definition of "terrorism," since the word is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning. At the same time, the word is extremely dangerous, …