Scats writes:

As all you AmCoppers well know, there is a new acronym on the scene: GWOT. It stands for the Global War On Terror. Although its use is still marginal, it is a favorite of chien, his hebephrenic band of brothers that make up the the Fighting Hellmice of the 101st Keyboarders and other denizens of jingoist discussion circles. I suppose we should be thankful that it has not replaced the more mainstream "War on Terror" as a description of what is currently going on in the world.

As many liberals have pointed out "War on Terror", being nonsense, is hardly satisfactory as a meaningful use of speech. Some have taken to calling it the "so-called War on Terror" which has the virtue of pointing out that the "War on Terror" is a name that doesn't fit the thing it names. Nevertheless, "so-called" doesn't trip off the tongue very easily and simply adding a qualification to "War on Terror" implicitly accepts the unacceptable linguistic frame already on offer.

So, a few sympathetic souls over at Hullabaloo and I have hashed out an alternative which I think could work. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, a much more accurate, easily understood and easily pronounced phrase:

T.W.A.T. -- Thousand-year War At Terror

The Thousand-year obviously echoes the original Fuhrer's description of his grand "vision" (something which Bush is said to have in spades). Whereas Hitler rhapsodized in historicalities and used "Thousand-year" to signify an epochal state of affairs, some of us are apparently more comfortable with spatial hyperbole and have come up with "Global". Things in our world aren't really grand unless they're Global, World-wide or International. Notice how our domestic nutcases fall well outside the rubric of the "War on Terror". Not crossing an international boundary to kill innocents is so Oklahoma City, so policework, so not a War.

At any rate, looking back on Hitler's use of "Thousand-year" it seems quaint when compared to our refinement in the use of "The End of History". Was that as far into the future as you could think, Adolf? You may have conquered Europe, but we ended the Future itself, you piker! Perhaps that's why there is no time or space qualification in the phrase "War on Terror", it is meant to be a state of relations, not an event. Since the current "war" has no end in policy, fact, thought or intent, "Thousand-year" is at least satirically accurate. Unfortunately "thousand-year" falls just a hair short of descriptive accuracy since our current "war" has no conceived end in time either. Terror, like the poor, will always be with us.

The ungrammatical "At" will no doubt raise objections. But "At" in this instance has a couple things going for it. Firstly, it echoes the troglodyte pseudo-"regular-guy" pidgin of our Dear Leader and his followers. Thus it reeks of authenticity, which has become the principal evaluative question of contemporary political suasion. Are the policies good or bad? Who cares? Could you have a beer with the people implementing the policies? At last, a question worth pondering. "At" taps into the zeitgeist and signals credibility.

Secondly, it signifies again more accurately what is going on. This "War" isn't being fought on terrorists, its being fought mostly with rhetoric in the direction of terrorism. Given what's happened in the last three years, we can only be said to be making war in the impressionistic or suggestive sense that we are making warlike gestures toward the abstraction of "Terror", but rarely, or at least not principally, actually taking common-sense steps to reduce "Terror". "Terror", equally a misnomer, having come to mean the activity or phenomenon of terrorist attacks. We haven't gotten "on" the problem in any substantive way, but we certainly talk "at" and "around" it quite a bit.

And to counter objections of sexist phraseology from the left, I would say that the play on "twat" is meant in the British slang sense of calling someone a fool or idiot. Not in the sense of calling someone a "cunt", which has more of an "asshole" or "bitch" connotation to it in American slang. Although it is still perjorative in the British sense, we can use it without a double standard if we remember that "tool", a slang word for the male penis, and also a useful fool or idiot, is in common use. Compare to "cock", "prick" or "dick" which have more of the "cunt/bitch" connotation. In English we use slang words for genitalia to indicate things that rub us the wrong way; it has nothing to do with the patriarchy.

Thus, TWAT.

To see how this would work out in practice one could type "war on terror" or "global war on terror" into the Google news search engine and then substitute the results with TWAT. Thus we get:

from the Boston Globe: Bush says that, "We are waging a broad and unrelenting TWAT, and an active campaign against proliferation."

from a Yahoo News press release: According to Robert David Steele Vivas, CEO of OSS.Net, Inc., a global commercial intelligence corporation, "TWAT is unwinnable as the U.S. Government is now trained, equipped, and organized."

headline from WATE in Tennessee: Officials appreciate Oak Ridge connection to TWAT

and from the Scotsman: The top soldier in the United States Army today likened the TWAT to fighting cancer and said that although it may go “in remission” it will not disappear.

and my personal favorite, from American Forces Information Services: What American soldiers are doing in the TWAT is every bit as important as what their grandparents did in World War II, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said.