"Terrorism after all is a technique of conflict, not the conflict itself. And just as we can't uninvent nuclear weapons, we can't eliminate the idea of terrorism from the human psyche. It will always be there to tempt the disaffected, the extremist, the mentally disturbed and the power-mad. So from now on it will always be part of our lives. The idea of winning a war on terror is a political conceit of the unsophisticated mind." ~ Joan Bakewell, in The Guardian UK
Not only an unsophisticated conceit, but a complete distraction from tacking the real problems in the world.