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The Pentagon, MMORPGs, and Catching Osama
MarkRH writes "I know, it looked like a troll to me too. But apparently a Pentagon-funded group, the Highlands Forum, is investigating the possibility of fighting terrorism by postulating that terrorist networks are similar to the online communities found in MMORPGs. By studying interaction within a community like Everquest, the military hopes to find hints on how to crack Al Qaeda." See also the "Uncloaking Terrorist Networks" post of several months back.
The euphemism "war on terror" is necessary because calling it "war on Islamic terrorists" or "war on Islamic fundamentalists" would get the administration in deep, deep doodoo. Politically, it's necessary to avoid looking like they are opposed to Islam. Muslims around the world already half believe that the US really is out to war on them.
There was some talk for a while that the War on Terror would apply to anybody using terror techniques, such as the Irish Republican Army, but that's an idea that went nowhere fast. Their opponents, therefore, are primarily Muslims, but not all Muslims.
So America-bashing and Bush administration-bashing aside (and I'm not a big fan myself, having voted for the other guy), the administration is faced with the fact that a small subset of essentially very good people is committing despicable acts in the name of those good people. These people are afraid of being punished for the sins of a few. Their support is crucial, and the US in general prefers to make friends rather than enemies. This is an incredibly untenable position for the US government. I'm hard pressed to come up with a better name for the effort, even if it is an obvious euphemism.
This warning is about 40 years too late.
UK SF fans used to be quite involved in postal Diplomacy. One of them was late orgsanising his moves once and sent a telegram to a potential ally reading "suggest we join forces for an attack on Liverpool".
He spent the following day deep in conversation with gentlemen wearing black raincoats.