It's NOT An Insurgency!
June 27, 2005.
"It's NOT An Insurgency!"
If any phrase makes me crazier than, "The insurgents....," I don’t know what it is. This morning I put Fox News First Edition on--because I didn’t want to hear the local news about fires, rapes, and murders of little children--and Kiran and Brian were talking in their intro about Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s appearance discussing the War on the Sunday news shows. If they used the word insurgency once, I bet they used it 20 times to describe what’s going on in Iraq. Yet every time someone is arrested in country, his name is abu somebody or other and he might be in Iraq, but he came there recently from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan or some other nearby country.
Now, just imagine, if a person from a neighboring country, say Mexico or Canada, came to the USA and organized his terrorist followers to set off a series of car bombs to protest our election and/or its process. Say he chose our Capital, Washington, DC, and other major cities, for his followers to set off these bombs, at police Stations, schools, and restaurants, killing our citizens, our visitors, our police, and our children, and interfering with our transportation systems, and our other infrastructure.
How would we feel about it? And what would we call those people? How would the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post handle the news coverage of the murderous acts these invaders committed against our Country and its people? Would you expect them and people around the world to call the perpetrators, American insurgents? Come on guys, let’s start saying what we mean and meaning what we say. People who commit these kinds of acts are terrorists. The terrorists we are running into are jihadist terrorists. Let’s start calling them what they really are.
Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times, in a recent editorial told the following story. "A radio interviewer asked Don Rumsfeld recently whether Chuck, Ted, and Dick, the panicky old women of Washington, are right that all is lost. 'On the political portion of it, that's obviously not the business of this department,' he said, 'but I can comment on it ... the election was held January 30. It took a number of weeks to put a government together. Not a number of years, but ... a group of people, with no experience in democracy at all, took a number of weeks ... a few months, to put together a government. ... This is amazing. This is historic. This is a gigantic step forward. This ought not to be dismissed or trivialized. This is a big deal. Can I guarantee anything in life? No, I can't. No one can. It's their country.' "
Pruden, added, “Our grandfathers, pressed down by the news of disasters from North Africa to the Philippines and all across the South Pacific in the winter of '42, would have cheered news like this as sent from Heaven. But this is not your grandfather's country. What a bunch of spoiled brats we've become. We don't deserve the men and women we've sent to destroy the jihad.”
Amen!
***
Source for the two paragraphs above my final comment came via email to me quoting an editorial from Wesley Pruden, Editor In Chief, The Washington Times. www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm
***
June 29, 2005 Update
I came upon some additional information in Wikipedia regarding the term "insurgency." It further defines the word and the circumstances under which the online encyclopedia advises one to use the term. I still disagree with its current popular usage because I see no acknowledgement that the terrorists in Iraq do not hail from Iraq, but instead are from other countries. They came to Iraq set up their terrorism shop and organized their terrorist organizations. Here's the Wikipedia definition. Wikipedia has a good point, though, as far as the definition's appropriateness since there is not yet a constituted government and since there is a military presence (rather than occupation). At the end of this entry is the source.
Mass media
In current use of “insurgency” is distinct from terrorism as in “under threat from insurgents and terrorists.” Insurgency has come into frequent use during 2003 through its incorrect use by Western politicians and English speaking mainstream media to describe those in resistance to the occupation and suffering in Iraq. This is an incorrect use of the term “insurgency” whose aim is the overthrow of a constituted government, whereas prior to April 21st 2005 and since March 20th 2003, the country was directly ruled by appointees of the occupation US miltary government of Iraq, having no constituted government. As of 2005, the term is more accurately used to signify the rebellion against the Iraq interim government. See Iraqi insurgency for more on the Iraq insurgents. However, there an open question about whether an country under military occupation can be considered to have either a constituted government or to be capable of conducting free and fair democratic elections. Outside of corporate media, the same force is described as the "legitimate Iraqi resistance" which is fighting against the occupation forces and its proxy government, which during the State of War entered into on March 20th 2003 upon the invasion of Iraq, can not be considered an insurgency. Indeed this "right of resistance" is enshrined in law by the Third Geneva Convention, Article 4 along with Additional Protocol I, Articles 43, 44 and 48 provide for the right of resistance and self-defense against invasion.
See also:
Counter insurgency
Rebel -- person active in rebellion, such as members of paramilitary forces.
Freedom fighter -- those engaged in rebellion against an established government.
Members of popular uprisings:
subversives (intent to overthrow or undermine an established government),
insurrectionists (armed rebels against the constituted authority),
mutineers (rebels within the authority's military that refuse to obey orders),
guerillas (small combat groups who strike, harass and retreat),
partisans (group of citizens organized to provide paramilitary service),
militants (violent actors who do not belong to an established military).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency
"It's NOT An Insurgency!"
If any phrase makes me crazier than, "The insurgents....," I don’t know what it is. This morning I put Fox News First Edition on--because I didn’t want to hear the local news about fires, rapes, and murders of little children--and Kiran and Brian were talking in their intro about Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s appearance discussing the War on the Sunday news shows. If they used the word insurgency once, I bet they used it 20 times to describe what’s going on in Iraq. Yet every time someone is arrested in country, his name is abu somebody or other and he might be in Iraq, but he came there recently from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan or some other nearby country.
Now, just imagine, if a person from a neighboring country, say Mexico or Canada, came to the USA and organized his terrorist followers to set off a series of car bombs to protest our election and/or its process. Say he chose our Capital, Washington, DC, and other major cities, for his followers to set off these bombs, at police Stations, schools, and restaurants, killing our citizens, our visitors, our police, and our children, and interfering with our transportation systems, and our other infrastructure.
How would we feel about it? And what would we call those people? How would the NY Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post handle the news coverage of the murderous acts these invaders committed against our Country and its people? Would you expect them and people around the world to call the perpetrators, American insurgents? Come on guys, let’s start saying what we mean and meaning what we say. People who commit these kinds of acts are terrorists. The terrorists we are running into are jihadist terrorists. Let’s start calling them what they really are.
Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times, in a recent editorial told the following story. "A radio interviewer asked Don Rumsfeld recently whether Chuck, Ted, and Dick, the panicky old women of Washington, are right that all is lost. 'On the political portion of it, that's obviously not the business of this department,' he said, 'but I can comment on it ... the election was held January 30. It took a number of weeks to put a government together. Not a number of years, but ... a group of people, with no experience in democracy at all, took a number of weeks ... a few months, to put together a government. ... This is amazing. This is historic. This is a gigantic step forward. This ought not to be dismissed or trivialized. This is a big deal. Can I guarantee anything in life? No, I can't. No one can. It's their country.' "
Pruden, added, “Our grandfathers, pressed down by the news of disasters from North Africa to the Philippines and all across the South Pacific in the winter of '42, would have cheered news like this as sent from Heaven. But this is not your grandfather's country. What a bunch of spoiled brats we've become. We don't deserve the men and women we've sent to destroy the jihad.”
Amen!
***
Source for the two paragraphs above my final comment came via email to me quoting an editorial from Wesley Pruden, Editor In Chief, The Washington Times. www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm
***
June 29, 2005 Update
I came upon some additional information in Wikipedia regarding the term "insurgency." It further defines the word and the circumstances under which the online encyclopedia advises one to use the term. I still disagree with its current popular usage because I see no acknowledgement that the terrorists in Iraq do not hail from Iraq, but instead are from other countries. They came to Iraq set up their terrorism shop and organized their terrorist organizations. Here's the Wikipedia definition. Wikipedia has a good point, though, as far as the definition's appropriateness since there is not yet a constituted government and since there is a military presence (rather than occupation). At the end of this entry is the source.
Mass media
In current use of “insurgency” is distinct from terrorism as in “under threat from insurgents and terrorists.” Insurgency has come into frequent use during 2003 through its incorrect use by Western politicians and English speaking mainstream media to describe those in resistance to the occupation and suffering in Iraq. This is an incorrect use of the term “insurgency” whose aim is the overthrow of a constituted government, whereas prior to April 21st 2005 and since March 20th 2003, the country was directly ruled by appointees of the occupation US miltary government of Iraq, having no constituted government. As of 2005, the term is more accurately used to signify the rebellion against the Iraq interim government. See Iraqi insurgency for more on the Iraq insurgents. However, there an open question about whether an country under military occupation can be considered to have either a constituted government or to be capable of conducting free and fair democratic elections. Outside of corporate media, the same force is described as the "legitimate Iraqi resistance" which is fighting against the occupation forces and its proxy government, which during the State of War entered into on March 20th 2003 upon the invasion of Iraq, can not be considered an insurgency. Indeed this "right of resistance" is enshrined in law by the Third Geneva Convention, Article 4 along with Additional Protocol I, Articles 43, 44 and 48 provide for the right of resistance and self-defense against invasion.
See also:
Counter insurgency
Rebel -- person active in rebellion, such as members of paramilitary forces.
Freedom fighter -- those engaged in rebellion against an established government.
Members of popular uprisings:
subversives (intent to overthrow or undermine an established government),
insurrectionists (armed rebels against the constituted authority),
mutineers (rebels within the authority's military that refuse to obey orders),
guerillas (small combat groups who strike, harass and retreat),
partisans (group of citizens organized to provide paramilitary service),
militants (violent actors who do not belong to an established military).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency
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