Two of President Bush’s descriptions of the current conflict – “war on terror” and “long war” – have come into question. Along with the language issue, the new controversy can lead to useful reconsideration of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and continuing terrorist threats.

The phrase “war on terror” has drawn sharp criticism from the British. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s international development secretary, Hilary Benn, told a think-tank gathering in New York that his government doesn’t use the phrase “because we can’t win by military means alone and because this isn’t one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives.” He added that extremists want to force their individual and narrow values on others “and by letting them feel part of something bigger we give them strength.”

The British Foreign Office banned the phrase in December in a directive to its diplomats around the world. But the Guardian newspaper reports that the Downing Street Web site still has 154 mentions of the “war on terror.”

As for the “long war” description of the Iraq conflict, the New York Times reports that Adm. William J. Fallon retired the phrase in March when he took over as head of Central Command. His predecessor, Gen. John P. Abizaid, had coined it as a signal that the United States faced a long military and political struggle. The Times quoted a command spokesman as saying, “The idea that we are going to be involved in a ‘long war,’ at the current level of operations, is not likely and unhelpful.”

As the Iraq war drags on, the United States finds itself trying to referee and conciliate a civil war between Sunni and Shiite factions. Meanwhile, as Michael F. Scheuer reported in his 2004 book, “Imperial Hubris,” the Islamic training camps are turning out a few thousand suicidal terrorists but a hundred thousand or more insurgents, who, in turn, train tens of thousands more.

Capturing and killing one al-Qaida leader after another and calling the enterprise a “war on terror” will never bring peace and democracy to Iraq and will never pacify the growing Islamic resentment against U.S. power and influence and military intervention in the Middle East.

If “war on terror” and “long war” won’t do, what should we call the conflict? Perhaps the administration could start with the idea that it isn’t the first word of those phrases that is the problem, but the second.