Part of such rabble rousers stock in trade is to conflate patriotism, freedom, and God.

It is tactically useful for Russia, China, and others to conflate espionage issues with civil liberties and accuse the US of hypocrisy.

It is also wrong to conflate Islamic terrorism with that of the Basque ETA, Sri Lanka s Tamil Tigers, or the Irish Republican Army.

Furthermore, situations of foreign occupation were governed by international humanitarian law. The draft comprehensive convention should not conflate such situations of armed conflict with others.

Overseas, the word Afghanistan strikes fear into many people's hearts, while some are quick to conflate it with the Taliban movement that ruled the country from 1996 to 2001 and continues to seek power through arms.

It is tactically useful for Russia, China, and others to conflate espionage issues with civil liberties and accuse the US of hypocrisy. But those charges seem odd coming from countries with weak rule of law and heavy Internet censorship.

Analysts might be looking first at their local circumstances, and then extrapolating from that to their assessments of global institutions. Pessimism about slow national recoveries in the developed world is causing analysts to conflate poor domestic and regional governance with poor global governance.