Terrorism

I've been thinking about terrorism and the word terror recently.
How could one not. The news each day is filled with stories
of stymied bombing attempts on airplanes, surfacing by OBL with
a new threat, admissions by the Secret Service and Homeland
Security about failures to recognize obvious breaches of
security.

The point is that we think of terrorism as a practice of fear induction
by use of arms and strength; to destroy or subjugate another.
From the photos dispatched from Haiti, though, there is no other word
that could better describe the reaction induced by the earthquake in
Haiti than terror. When I think of terror, I see pictures, first
the one of the little girl set afire by napalm during the Viet Nam
War. running from her home to the cover of Ramparts Magazine?

And what does a family feel when confronted with an economic picture
for the current month that will delete them from their homes
next month? How does a parent of a sick young adult feel when s/he
cannot pay for ongoing medical needs?

Then we have all the abuses that we hear about, in relationships
between partners, parents and children, gangs and neighborhoods and
the like? Terror abounds globally and locally. Maybe this
accounts for the popularity of yoga and mindfulness and other
self-soothing techniques so popular these days.

Has the word terror been wrested from the language and reshaped
to represent more than it should? Is the current lexicon, too,
victimized by violence? And when does personal fear escalate to terror?
I think mine might, and that I might have lost the battle to resist
it. The difference between fear and terror within seems to be
a subtle paralysis of will, a non-verbal surrender, a blow-out.