What is an Insurgent?
Insurgents are people, possibly part of a group, who rebel against a recognized authority such as a government. Insurgents can act singly or be part of an insurgency, which is a group of people with similar goals attempting to destabilize a recognized power. The use of the term insurgent is a loaded one, since it has an implied negative connotation that does not always exist. For example, Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War for the US were insurgents. However, US textbooks tend not to refer to these individuals as insurgents. Instead they may be called patriots or rebels. However, their act of defying the laws of the British monarchy constitutes insurgency. Currently the US defines people rebelling against the newly established government of Iraq as insurgents. However, these people do not define themselves as such. According to their own definition, they are freedom fighters attempting to free Iraq of occupation by infidels. By labeling Iraqi freedom fighters as insurgents,
It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, but a well chosen word can make an otherwise clear picture, quite obscure. This became very evident for me recently as I read an Associated Press article1 about how 76 insurgents were killed in fierce fighting. For some time now, I have been asking myself, what on earth is an insurgent? It sounds like one of those euphemistic expressions, seen so often in print, intended to make cutthroat terrorist look less terrifying. They become even less terrifying when later in the article they are referred to as mere “suspected insurgents.” Calling terrorists “suspected insurgents” strongly suggests that our troops are killing innocent people. Such language implies that a courtroom-like-investigation has to be carried out to determine whether a suspected terrorist is really a terrorist or just a Muslim that happens to like wearing a bomb around his waist and a rifle over his shoulder. Explanation of the Talismanic word Using the word “insurgent” in
An insurgent may be as simple as one questioning the actions of ones government trying to find the truth inside a free press and finding it blinded by government control that implants fear in its own people. An insurgent may be one that seen picture of friends being tortured or humiliated by those claiming to be the savior of their country. To some Republicans, anyone who gets in the way.
