What's an Insurgent? What's a Terrorist?

As a student of Latin American politics, the word "insurgency" brings to mind myriad images and groups, from the iconic Ché Guevara and his beret to numerous Marxist guerrilla groups that operated in the region during the Cold War. Setting aside the wrong-headedness of their ideology for a moment, and acknowledging that in many cases extreme and unjustifiable violence was committed in the name of those ideas, I can't help but note the difference between those "insurgents" and what we are seeing operating in Iraq.

The difference is quite stark: even the most violent of Marxist guerrillas in Latin America were at least ostensibly fighting for utopian dreams of social justice. They fought against the oligarchy, they fought for the peasant and the urban laborer and their goals were to create a society in which all could live in peace and equality. At least on paper they sought victory to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

Now, I will wholly grant that these were dreams of the most fanciful type. However, one could at least see a romantic struggle (as many on Left in United States did see) in these fights. And there were even cases where one could at least understand why the militants in question took up arms against regimes that were far from perfect, and in many cases openly tyrannical.

So while it is ultimately true that the fight to establish socialist utopia was both misguided and likely to result in new tyrannies (e.g., the Castro regime), there was at least a positive goal in the minds of those who fought. They might have killed to achieve their goals, but the killing itself was never the goal.

Contrast that to the black-hooded thugs who decapitated Nicolas Berg and Kim Sun-Il, or to the faceless villains who explode car bombs on the crowded streets of Baghdad with no concern for the death caused to civilians. At least the guerrilla wars of the past mostly (although by no means exclusively) took their fights directly to the state and the military, not to families shopping at the local market.

What's a terrorist and what's an insurgent? It all depends, but there is one thing for sure . .

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WHY ARE ALL TERRORISTS MUSLIM?

"Unless a man becomes the enemy of evil, he will not even become its slave, but rather its champion. God Himself will not help us to ignore evil but only to defy and to defeat it!" G. K. Chesterton.

In an outrageous attack upon Christian leaders facing the lie of Islam with the Word of God, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) issued a public rebuke, sharply criticizing "derogatory statements" made by some evangelical leaders concerning Islam. The National Association of Evangelicals represents more than 43,000 congregations in the United States of America. Specifically, the NAE named Franklin Graham, Dr. Jerry Vines, and the Revs. Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson as chief culprits who must learn to temper their speech concerning Islam.

This is shocking! The NAE wants to take the one offensive weapon we Christians have in our arsenal, the Word of God, and replace it with - dialogue? That's right! The truth of God's Word is being replaced with tolerance, appeasement, common ground, reaching across the aisle, pragmatism, and negotiation. "Can't we all just get along?" Of course the answer is, "No! Not when God's Word is the standard."

To be sure, God's Word is confrontational, dividing, judgmental, and absolute, yet it is filled with mercy. Islam, on the other hand, is all of the above, yet it is filled with violence and murder. There is no common ground between these two religions. Islam and Christianity are at war! Neither will tolerate the other.

Unfazed by planes crashing into buildings killing thousands, suicide bombings of countless innocent human beings, mass slaughter of millions of Christians in the Sudan, and violence of unprecedented order, the NAE now wants us to dialogue with the Christ hating false religion of Islam. This spiritually emasculated organization, is espousing that we hide in caves so that we won't be killed by Muslims living out their faith in the streets of our cities. Living out their faith?

The NAE's solution to stop the merciless bloodletting of Islam is to draft guidelines and begin an interfaith dialogue with Islamic leaders. What utter nonsense! Somehow the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev. Ted Haggard, has convinced himself and several others of the good faith of his Islamic counterparts. Haggard is championing the lie of Islam without realizing what it is that he and the NAE are doing.

Ask a simple question, "Why are all terrorists Muslim?" You doubt the premise of the question? Let's just take a look:

1972 Muslim terrorists kidnap Israelite athletes at Olympics in Munich (14 killed).
1972 Muslim terrorists overtake U.S. Embassy in Iran.
1980's Muslim terrorists abduct large numbers of U.S, citizens in Lebanon.
1983 Muslim terrorists bomb Marine barracks in Beirut (250 U.S. soldiers killed).
1985 Muslim terrorists commandeer cruise ship Achille Lauro (Mr. Klinghoeffer, a 70 year old paraplegic, was shot to death and pushed overboard in his wheelchair).
1985 Muslim terrorists seize TWA Flight 847 in Athens (U.S. Navy Seal killed in attempt to rescue passengers).
1988 Muslim terrorists bomb Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland (all souls killed).
1993 Muslim terrorists bomb the World Trade Center for the first time (6 killed).
1994 Muslim terrorists begin the mass slaughter (genocide?) of Christians in the Sudan (more than 2 million slaughtered to date).
1998 Muslim terrorists bomb U.S. Embassies in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nairobi (264 killed and over 4,000 wounded).
2000 Muslim terrorists bomb U.S.S. Cole (14 killed).
2001 Muslim terrorists hijack four airliners and crash them into buildings and the ground killing thousands.
2001 Muslim terrorists call for jihad in Indonesia as Christians are warned to flee the country.
2002 Muslim terrorists kidnap Martin and Gracia Burnham (along with others) in the Phillipines. Martin was killed in the rescue attempt. Gracia made it home.
2002 Muslim terrorists defeated in Afghanistan by strong arm of United States Military.
2002 Muslim terrorists kidnap and ruthlessly slash the throat of journalist Daniel Pearl.
2002 Black Muslim terrorist John Mohammed kills twelve in a cold-blooded 21-day killing spree near Washington, D.C. He was suspected of throwing a grenade into a tent housing 16 soldiers in Gulf War in 1991.
2002 Muslim terrorists bomb a Jewish owned hotel in Kenya (16 killed, 80 injured).
2002 Muslim terrorists bomb a night club in Bali where many westerners were present (182 killed).
2003 Black Muslim terrorist SGT Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne rolls a grenade into the barracks of sleeping soldiers (kills 2 and wounds 12).
2003 Muslim terrorists convicted of plotting to bomb a Christmas market in Strasbourg, Germany.
2003 Muslim terrorists bomb US-Saudi company and three residential areas where westerners live in Saudi Arabia (at least 50 injured, many died).
2003 Muslim terrorists bomb Jewish and western targets in Casablanca (41 killed).
2003 Muslim terrorists bombard Israel on a daily basis with assaults of unprecedented order.
What do all of these recorded instances of sheer violence and evil have in common? Islam! Why are all these terrorists Muslim? Their false and murderous religion demands them to be so. There is no escaping the link between terrorism and the Islamic faith. Islam is a lie birthed in the very pit of hell that must be defeated before it destroys everyone who will not bow the knee to Allah and his lying prophet Mohammed.
Islam must be annihilated, completely. It must be exposed for the lie that it is. Allah is not God and Mohammed is not a prophet of God. Jesus is God, and apart from Him there is no other. Jesus is not tolerant of any other God than Himself, for there is no other God but Him! For the NAE to say anything less is to betray the God of the Holy Scriptures and the 43,000 congregations it represents.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), upon hearing the NAE's appeasing statement said, "We can understand theological differences, but what's important is that the dialogue is one of respect, not demonization." Dialogue? Sure, Rev. Haggard, you won the accolades of Islam, but you are suffering under the condemnation of heaven. There is nothing Islam would rather do than to dialogue with you while it continues its murderous onslaught. The Word of God demonizes Islam, not Franklin Graham or any of the others.
For the NAE to take its cues from CAIR, a front organization for Islamic terrorism, is absurd. CAIR is the organization that came up with the politically correct idea that America should no longer be considered a "Judeo-Christian" nation. Why? Because it is offensive to Muslims living in America. Please! CAIR is that "gentle" organization that coined the endearing term "Islamophobia," and is presently suing American Airlines for wrongfully profiling "middle eastern" looking men.
Wrongfully profiling? One doesn't have to look too long at the statistics to realize that 98.7% of all hijackings from 1970 to this day were done by "middle eastern" looking men who were all (100% of them) Muslim terrorists. CAIR says it's just not fair to be demonized by the Word of God. Too bad! Unfortunately the NAE wants to jump on that "politically correct" ship that is going to sink into eternal damnation.
We have three choices in dealing with Islam. We will either be killed by those holding to its murderous tenets, kill them (like we are doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.), or convert them to Christ. Which one do you choose?
Flip Benham

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One-eyed cleric Abu Hamza al Masri,said, "Jihad, in general, is striving for [the] sake of God to establish his law…on earth, and the backbone of his law is fighting. So every fighting cause of God is Jihad. What are [the] consequences for infidels? If you live in my property, and you don't pay me my rent, then you get out and Jihad is to get you out. This is the property of God. You don't worship him, you get out and how [do] you get out? You get killed."

What's An Insurgent? What's a Terrorist? - Steven L. Taylor

As a student of Latin American politics, the word "insurgency" brings to mind myriad images and groups, from the iconic Ché Guevara and his beret to numerous Marxist guerrilla groups that operated in the region during the Cold War. Setting aside the wrong-headedness of their ideology for a moment, and acknowledging that in many cases extreme and unjustifiable violence was committed in the name of those ideas, I can't help but note the difference between those "insurgents" and what we are seeing operating in Iraq.

The difference is quite stark: even the most violent of Marxist guerrillas in Latin America were at least ostensibly fighting for utopian dreams of social justice. They fought against the oligarchy, they fought for the peasant and the urban laborer and their goals were to create a society in which all could live in peace and equality. At least on paper they sought victory to improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

Now, I will wholly grant that these were dreams of the most fanciful type. However, one could at least see a romantic struggle (as many on Left in United States did see) in these fights. And there were even cases where one could at least understand why the militants in question took up arms against regimes that were far from perfect, and in many cases openly tyrannical.

So while it is ultimately true that the fight to establish socialist utopia was both misguided and likely to result in new tyrannies (e.g., the Castro regime), there was at least a positive goal in the minds of those who fought. They might have killed to achieve their goals, but the killing itself was never the goal.

Contrast that to the black-hooded thugs who decapitated Nicolas Berg and Kim Sun-Il, or to the faceless villains who explode car bombs on the crowded streets of Baghdad with no concern for the death caused to civilians. At least the guerrilla wars of the past mostly (although by no means exclusively) took their fights directly to the state and the military, not to families shopping at the local market.

However, who are the targets and what is the goal of this current batch of "insurgents" in Iraq, and elsewhere in the jihadist movement? First, they target primarily civilians, not the state. Second, their goal is not earthly utopia, but rather a perverse view of the afterlife, which results in a very ugly reality for those unfortunate to be caught in their crosshairs. And last, but not least, they appear not to be driven by romantic ideological views, but twisted theology and a cult of death.

What are these terrorists fight for? Iraqi freedom? That exists and could flourish save for the mad attacks of terrorists. Do they simply seek the removal of the United States as an occupier? Then why are they killing Iraqis?

Indeed, as James Joyner has recently noted, the application of the term "insurgents" to these individuals is suspect. Citing Bard O'Neill's book Insurgency & Terrorism, Joyner points to this definition of "insurgency":

"A struggle between a nonruling group and the ruling authorities in which the nonruling group consciously uses political resources (e.g., organizational expertise, propaganda, and demonstrations) and violence to destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more aspects of politics (p. 13)."

Under this definition, it is difficult to define al-Zarqawi's group, or any like it, as anything other than terrorists. Indeed, "terrorist" would be the polite term, with thug and serial murders being more accurate. For one thing, how can a new basis of legitimacy be created by indiscriminant killings of Iraqi civilians and of contractors working to rebuild the infrastructure of the country?

The classic understanding of an insurgency is a situation in which some subset of the overall population seeks to overthrow the existing government due to a severe disagreement that makes other means of settling political disputes untenable. However, the terrorist operating in Iraq are seeking chaos, not revolution, and as such they seek not a better life for Iraqis, or even Muslims writ large. Rather their only earthly goal appears to be death for anyone with whom they do not agree. It is this fact that makes our conflict with these types of groups a war, whether we like it or not.

In comparing the utopian dreams of Marxist rebels to the cult of death that men like al-Zarqawi seem to revel in, I would prefer any day to live in Castro's Cuba than in the dystopia that the jihadists would bring. While hardly the kind of choice I would ever want to make in real life, it is starkly chilling, however, to note the obvious conclusions that one would reach if one were ever confronted with such a decision.

As such I would like to see terms like "militants," "guerrillas" and "insurgents" taken from the mouths of the press and replaced with the appropriate vocabulary. There is nothing here to romanticize, nothing to extol, and no cause to seek neutral language. The appropriate labels therefore ought to be employed.

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Tech Central Station? Nope, not on JimRob's list....thanks for the posting, quid....good stuff.....

Quidnunc,

There you go again....

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