AlterNet Mobile Edition:
"Colin Powell had suggested 'crime' as the frame to use. It justifies an international hunt for the criminals, allows 'police actions' when the military is absolutely required, and places the focus and the funding on where it should go: intelligence, diplomacy, politics, economics, religion, banking, and so on. And it would have kept us militarily strong and in a better position to deal with cases like North Korea and Darfur.
But the crime frame comes with no additional power for the president, and no way to hide domestic troubles. It comes with trials at the international court, giving that court's sovereignty over purely American institutions. It couldn't win in the administration as constituted.
The abstract noun, 'terror,' names not a nation or even people, but an emotion and the acts that create it. A 'war on terror' can only be metaphorical. Terror cannot be destroyed by weapons or signing a peace treaty. A war on terror has no end. The president's war powers have no end. The need for a Patriot Act has no end.
It is important to note the date on which the phrase 'war on terror' died and was replaced by 'global struggle against violent extremism.' It was right after the London bombing. Using the War frame to think and talk about terrorism was becoming more difficult. The Iraq War was declared won and over, but it became clear that it was far from over and not at all won and that it created many new terrorists for every one it destroyed. The last justification - fighting the war on terror in Iraq so it wouldn't have to be fought at home -- died in the London bombing."
How to fight Terror? Same way you dismantle an atomic bomb.