A war is a war is a war

Once again, we are failing to use our language. If anyone else calls the current Middle East crisis a "conflict," I will buy him a plane ticket to Jerusalem and ask him to report back in a couple of weeks, so that he can explain to me the difference between a conflict and a war.\nI'm sure there are some delightfully political reasons for Dubya and his buddy, Secretary of State Colin Powell, to avoid using the word "war." And the pundits in the media are probably confused after months of calling our own un-fettered international aggression a war, when it's really a should-be criminal investigation that's lost track of its criminal (Osama, where are you?). If you want to see war, look to Palestine.\nOr Israel. Or use the name I've invented for conversations with people who have a personal stake in the matter: "You know, that place over there…with the bombs and violence and Arabs and Jews and suicide and tanks and burned down homes and misery…where all the king's men couldn't put Israel or Palestine or anything else back together again."\nThis kind of conversational athleticism is necessary when I have to contend with my Arab friends or my Jewish friends, because heaven knows, I want to agree with them all. I have friends who will lecture me for hours on end when it comes to the Jews' right to a homeland and to the West Bank. On the other hand, I am friends with an activist who is fighting for Palestine, and who can tell numbing horror stories about Arab ambulances that aren't allowed past road blocks, and innocent families whose homes are demolished by an "occupying army." And the killings. The horrible, endless killings of Jews and Palestinians. \nI don't understand wanting a homeland that is wracked by violence. It's a wonder everyone over there doesn't move to Ohio! Perhaps, if there were a chance of peace…But as it stands now, with this particular period of aggression having lasted seventeen months, and this general aggression having lasted more than fifty years, and absent a major change of sentiment from war-mongers on both sides, there is no hope. \nI know that sounds bleak and fatalistic, but who can argue? The Israeli government (or the occupying government, as my Palestinian friends would have it) has rejected requests from the international community to exchange the West Bank and part of Jerusalem for peace, emphatically reasoning that to give an inch would invite the Palestinians to take a mile. Palestine (or the Palestinian Authority, as my Jewish friends would have it) has little hope in the face of this inflexibility. The mad actions of the suicide bombers under the control of lawless groups like Hamas pull Palestine further into a desperate corner.\n Lucky, and quite symbolically, my Palestinian friends and my Jewish friends are never in the same room at the same time. If that were ever to happen, I'd have to put my head between my knees, and screw my fingers in my ears.\nIn fact, that's pretty much the posture of our country, at least when it comes to the war in the Middle East. We'd much rather fight against an invisible enemy who keeps changing to suit our needs, disappearing and reappearing along an axis of evil. Meanwhile, we can't even bring ourselves to call what's going on in Israel, Palestine, or whatever, a war. No matter who is winning that war, I'm pretty sure the United States is losing it. At least in terms of language.