Bookworm,
you say: "that's an abuse of Newton's third law"
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NASA don't seem to be too upset by such abuse:
Quote from:
http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/newton.html
"The third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal force on object A. Notice that the forces are exerted on different objects. The third law can be used to explain the generation of lift by a wing"