Define "Terrorist"

Does the word "terrorist" carry any meaning these days? The sole operative definition seems to be "anyone Republicans don't like."

Fox News refers to the combative denizens of Fallujah as "terrorists," even though both CNN and the American military use the term "insurgents." American forces are decimating entire city blocks via AC-130 gunships, a tactic described by Fox as a series of "surgical strikes." This description will make sense only to those who think surgery can be conducted with a claymore; such weaponry cannot be used discriminately. We are now conducting ruthless reprisal raids against civilians in a foreign land who won't kowtow to American authority. No other words describe the situation.

Pratap Chatterjee, a reporter on the scene, told Democracy Now that women and children are filling the clinics. According to Fox and the administration's fans, those women and children are "terrorists." Not the people who ordered the AC-130s into action. Women and children.

A few further examples demonstrate the pattern:

-- Karen Hughes, the obnoxious arch-conservative advisor to Bush, has used the T-word to describe abortion rights advocates.

-- Sean Hannity subtitled his newest book to implicate all liberals as terrorists.

-- On CNN, Richard Perle damned Seymour Hersh as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist," simply because Hersh had written a story pointing out a Perle conflict of interest.

-- Oregon legislator John Minnis drafted a bill that would mandate a 25-to-life sentence for "terrorism," a term he defined so broadly as to include peaceful protestors.

Bush defines his oil-grab invasion of Iraq as a "war on terror." Guerilla fighters fighting foreign occupiers of their home country are terrorists. Anti-war demonstrators are terrorists.

Does the word continue to have any meaning?

During the cold war, "communist" meant anything or anyone you didn't like. If the dog soiled your carpet, the dog was a communist. The situation has changed. Now poochie's a terrorist.