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

Tech Central Station ^ | July 1, 2004 | Steven L. Taylor

[quidnunc]

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.

-snip-

[potlatch]

You are not only a 'font' collector, but a ping collector!

[Embedded Freeper]

Hahaha...Ain't that the truth?
Oh, did you mean Perot?
The Democrats need him again, but Nader will do for now.

[GretchenM]

Hercule Poirot (Pwah ROH)... the massively successful detective created by Agatha Christie. Belgian, NOT French, as he was always so careful to point out. hehe

[Embedded Freeper]

Oh shucks.
I am not well read.
Thanks for the correction.
Hahaha...anyone would make a distinction between themselves and the surrender monkeys.