From ,a href="http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=94353">Today's Indepedent

What is a declaration of war against terrorism, apart from a rhetorical device?

"Whatever the technical and legal issues about a declaration of war," the Prime Minister said yesterday, "the fact is that we are at war with terrorism." Never mind the technical and legal issues, there is the plain meaning of words. It is only meaningful to declare war on a state or a military power; anything else is metaphor.

You cannot declare war on a tactic; it is as if President Roosevelt responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by declaring war on bombing.

It does not even make much sense to declare war on terrorists.

When President Bush solemnly announces that the United States is on a war footing and calls up the reservists, he does not seriously intend to mobilise resources against Eta, the Tamil Tigers or the Real IRA.

Irish terrorism is an illuminating case: when it comes to harbouring terrorists, the pre-Clinton US record of tolerating IRA fundraising and refusing to extradite IRA suspects does not bear close scrutiny.

We cannot even be sure that Osama bin Laden was behind the 11 September attacks. The US – and Britain – is thus at war with only a "prime suspect".

This is a war which, like the war against drugs, debases the language. There may yet be a real war, of course. If the US and its allies commit forces to fighting in Afghanistan there will, of course, be casualties on the Nato side, unlike the war in Kosovo or, in significant numbers, the Gulf war. That could lead the West into a war like Vietnam, but we are, we hope, a long way from that yet.

We are being purist, possibly even pedantic.

President Bush needs to respond rhetorically to the grief, anger and frustration of American opinion.

Thus the geniuses of the presentational arts give us Operation Noble Eagle, while the intelligence agencies get on with the essentially rather passive job of working out who was behind the atrocities and the military planners with that of working out how to reach them. It is possible that by talking tough and acting cautiously George Bush is pursuing a sensible, pragmatic strategy. Meanwhile, Tony Blair is pursuing a similar approach: he has attracted attention in the US for his "shoulder to shoulder" stance of unqualified support, thus ensuring that, when in private he advises restraint, he will be taken seriously.

There are dangers in the over-use of the language of war, however. It raises the expectation of an early, overwhelming and probably indiscriminate military response.

If that does not happen, public opinion in America may prove harder to mobilise when it comes to the resolve and expense needed to follow through on what President Bush has accepted will be a long and difficult process.

A secondary danger is that the rhetoric of war will be used to justify intolerance. Although the lives of US or British service personnel are not yet at stake, there is already an assumption, which would be wrong even if they were at risk, that questioning the policy of national leaders is collaborating with terrorists.

This is particularly strong in the US, which has a long tradition of non-partisan support for the presidency at times of crisis. But it is happening here too, as it did in the Falklands and Gulf wars.

Any suggestion that aggressive military action against suspects in Afghanistan might be counter-productive (because it could recruit a new generation of suicide terrorists), is treated in some quarters as "left-wing bias".

Greg Dyke, the director general of the BBC, was wrong to apologise for last week's edition of Question Time, in which members of the studio audience said that the US ought to try to understand why it was so hated by some Muslims. [bold is mine]

It is vitally important, if this is indeed a war between civilisation and fanaticism, as President Bush and Mr Blair have said, that it is fought in the name of civilised values.

Most people will accept some restrictions on civil liberties for the sake of protection against terrorism – luggage and personal searches, for example. The arguments about identity cards and DNA records, meanwhile, are mostly those of practicality and effectiveness rather than principle.

What they should never accept, however, except in cases of incitement to violence, are restrictions on the right of free expression.

Mr Blair, to his credit, recalled Parliament precisely so that there could be an open debate, and told CNN that, "if people want to be anti-British or anti-American, we're democrats, we believe that people have the right to express their views".

He also accepted that all he was offering the US at this stage was words of support. "That is the easy part. The hard part starts when you actually take the action."

Let us hope that the weekend's inflated language has not prejudiced the sustained work needed to make the world safer from terrorists when the hard decisions do need to be taken.