'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

It gets to be even more fun. Al Qaeda means "the base." Since Osama has presumably long since left Afghanistan, who has the biggest "Qaeda" in Afghanistan? And what about American Al Qaeda in Iraq? The list is impressive:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/iraq.htm

One of the things that drives me completely batty is the way we so easily buy into the propaganda terminology the government and its military (and marketers and PR people) use to subliminally deceive the public.

I have been screaming my head off about that since the beginning of the Iraq atrocity, and rarely does anyone listen. On the contrary, quite a few people who should know better (including some here) like to pat me on the head, smile indulgently, and assure me that it really is quite appropriate to, for example, lump together those who resist an illegitimate, brutally oppressive foreign occupation with those who take advantage of the chaos to commit crimes, and call them all "insurgents" - a term which, by definition, in no way applies to either group. After all, they will argue, this has become, over time, a common use of the term. Well OF COURSE it has, because people like us have blindly and thoughtlessly adopted it, and used it in place of realistically accurate terms, thus helping the propagandists to promote false images and ideas through false language.

LANGUAGE MATTERS, PEOPLE! IT MATTERS A LOT, AND FALSE USE OF TERMINOLOGY IS A BIG FAT LIE JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BIG FAT LIE. In fact, it is in ways the worst kind of big fat lie because it is intended to change public perceptions so subtly that no one notices.

And when we go along with false terminology such as this we are accepting and perpetuating the lie. We are helping the liars. And eventually, language loses its meaning and impact, not to mention its ability to convey certain subtleties.

There was an insurgency in Iraq in 1991. There has not been an insurgency in Iraq since 2003. PLEASE let's not go along with the government, the Pentagon, and the marketers in their efforts to deceive and legitimize the rotten by adopting their deceptive language.

One of the things that drives me completely batty is the way we so easily buy into the propaganda terminology the government and its military (and marketers and PR people) use to subliminally deceive the public.

I have been screaming my head off about that since the beginning of the Iraq atrocity, and rarely does anyone listen. On the contrary, quite a few people who should know better (including some here) like to pat me on the head, smile indulgently, and assure me that it really is quite appropriate to, for example, lump together those who resist an illegitimate, brutally oppressive foreign occupation with those who take advantage of the chaos to commit crimes, and call them all "insurgents" - a term which, by definition, in no way applies to either group. After all, they will argue, this has become, over time, a common use of the term. Well OF COURSE it has, because people like us have blindly and thoughtlessly adopted it, and used it in place of realistically accurate terms, thus helping the propagandists to promote false images and ideas through false language.

LANGUAGE MATTERS, PEOPLE! IT MATTERS A LOT, AND FALSE USE OF TERMINOLOGY IS A BIG FAT LIE JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BIG FAT LIE. In fact, it is in ways the worst kind of big fat lie because it is intended to change public perceptions so subtly that no one notices.

And when we go along with false terminology such as this we are accepting and perpetuating the lie. We are helping the liars. And eventually, language loses its meaning and impact, not to mention its ability to convey certain subtleties.

There was an insurgency in Iraq in 1991. There has not been an insurgency in Iraq since 2003. PLEASE let's not go along with the government, the Pentagon, and the marketers in their efforts to deceive and legitimize the rotten by adopting their deceptive language.

The main theoretical aspect of guerrilla warfare is a war of totality based upon a mass movement. Therefore, we can say guerrilla warfare starts and ends with politics and is fought for political goal. After the World War II, many nations were fighting for national liberation of their countries from foreign occupation, were fighting against colonialism and for their independence.

In other words, guerrilla warfare is always politically oriented and political change would result. People have used guerrilla warfare through recorded history against their oppressors or against their invaders to achieve their victory and to cover their freedom. Thus, guerrilla warfare is used by oppressed people in order to destroy an existing authority and its institution, and replace them with a completely new state structure. Guerrilla wars, for instance, in China, Vietnam, Algeria , South Africa and in Irak serves a good example.

Hafid

Say Don, got a link for the DOD dictionary you reference? Your sardonic take is indeed amusing; I'm looking for more. I've been reading DOD counterinsurgency studies for decades too.... and I'm just as jaundiced about how terms gets invoked so sloppily....

Maybe my head needs a slappin' too, but you lose me with this:

"the resistance to the occupation resulting from the insurgency cannot itself be an insurgency,"

Um, then what pray tell is it?

(Ok, -- I get it this far -- that by the DOD definitions you cite, the US invasion of Iraq was an "insurgency" -- and thus subsequent resistance was the "counter" to that.... and we can't now be countering the counter-insurgency.... (etc.)

Maybe you're having good semantic fun, and I'm taking you too seriously. (yet thanks for the stimulation)

From the DOD, key might be "constituted" government -- and that's why I'm curious to see the full dictionary you reference.

Scott

How is your lad getting on?

Shirin, how was the Crow Pie?

One of the guys who taught me jungle warfare told me of a book by a guy called Spencer Chapman called "The Jungle is Neutral". It includes the story of a Malay guerilla Chin Peng trained by the British who fought the Japanese during the shooting in the 1940s. After the Japanese surendered and left Chin Peng fought the British.

What people call call you really depends on who you are shooting at. The Mujahedin in Afghanistan were brave resistance fighters when they were dinging Russian helicopters, but became ruthless terrorists when they started dinging American trucks.

Shirin,
Thanks for weighing in.

I, for one, will not just pat you on the head on this one. You are right on target. Words do matter not for the semantics alone but for their deep meanings. A citizen that would never "insurge" against his own country will certainly "resist" a foreign military occupation, just as you or I would. So calling such a person an insurgent (or dead-ender, or terrorist) is not only a mis-description but a deep insult to his or her nation-hood and motivations.

The underlying, unspoken meaning here, of course, is something I didn't go into. That is, the US has implied hegemony over any country on earth that is unfortunate enough to be the current target of its aggression, and any resistance to this manifest hegemony is therefore insurgency against the Empire. You're either with us or you're against us, and if the latter and it is done by force of arms then you're an insurgent or worse.

I also agree that people who should know better have few qualms about calling these freedom-fighters insurgents or even terrorists. I encountered this very recently on another blog, which shall remain nameless as I would never defame Fabius Maximus, when the otherwise literate blogmaster responded to my protestations by saying "it's only semantics -- we use the commonly-accepted terms." I quickly removed the bookmark for this blog.

Frank,
Welcome back. You were missed. But man, you gotta learn to google. Just google "dod dictionary" and click on the first entry and you'll go here.
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/

Sorry, I meant Scott. I wasn't into the new format. The employees are always the last one to get the word.

As I recall Frank, Chin Peng took part in the Victory Parade in London in 1945 or 1946. Great book by the way.

تحت عنوان "أكس فايلز" ولا يعرف من هم

وأوضحت حقي أنهم "معتقلون وفق قانون أمريكي يدعى قانون (الأدلة السرية)، وحذرت من احتمال أن "يقوم الجيش الأمريكي بنقلهم إلى خارج العراق بعد انسحابه نظرا لعدم الإشارة لهم في قضية المعتقلين ضمن الاتفاقية التي أقرتها الحكومة العراقية مع واشنطن مؤخرا".

http://www.sotaliraq.com/iraqnews.php?id=31419

These are Iraqis "thousands" of them US hold them in secrets place on the land of Iraq no one knew how many or what their cause of been detained only US put "X" on their files as threat to National Security (of course Iraq national security.

SOFA has no any mentioned of them what statues will be these guys are treated or might US taken them to new Quam camp.

This your freedom and democracy that old Lair talking and the new one with his meaningless of change with his Clinton administration version

Secret prisons are beginning to dot the landscape in America, too. Some guy got sent to one because he set fire to a bunch of autos at a car dealer. The crime was deemed to be terrorism, though no one was hurt.
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2008/12/04/news1.html

[These days the auto industry must have dreams about hiring arsonists to reduce inventory. But would they be called terrorists?]

Don, you say, "Words do matter not for the semantics alone but for their deep meanings. A citizen that would never 'insurge' against his own country will certainly 'resist' a foreign military occupation, just as you or I would. So calling such a person an insurgent (or dead-ender, or terrorist) is not only a mis-description but a deep insult to his or her nation-hood and motivations." So you again give the act of fighting in resistance to an occupying power an inherent merit in total disregard for context or motivation. In that paragraph and "And when this insurgency results in a foreign military occupation that is resisted, which is quite natural and something you or I would do" you try to ennoble the resistance fighter based on just being a resistance fighter alone. So any native German and Japanese fighters resisting the occupation of the allies must be heroes as well, along with any Georgian who tried to resist Russian troops crossing into Georgia proper recently. You're manipulating terms yourself to push your black and white vision of ennobled resistance fighters fighting against an evil "Empire".

Inkan1969,
Except for the manipulating part, I agree with you.

And resistance fighters don't need me to enoble them. Like the heroes of the French Resistance they are self-enobling.

Like the Vietnam vet wrote (this is from memory): I heard a shot go closely over my head and then it came to me -- I'm trying to conquer his country while he's defending his.

This is a brainwashed state. You worship the Resistance Fighter without question or context. This idol has frozen your mind.

Mr. Don Bacon, you are brave man and very courageous in expressing your views in this way. You have a lo of people,in the world,sharing your viewpoints.

Hafid

Inkan1969,
Perhaps if there were a foreign army post in your town, with soldiers raiding houses every night and carrying off the young men to be tortured and raping school girls in their spare time, or otherwise lowering the moral values of the community and making the citizens feel inferior, you would feel differently. You would then feel like an Iraqi, or a Korean, or an Okinawan, for three examples. I hope so.

Here's the quote:
"One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions." --Mike Hastie, U.S. Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71

No, Don. I am sure Inkan would be a collaborator. And he would be simply stunned to be viewed and treated as a pariah by his fellow citizens.

Don, I think you posted the same statement in some other thread. Like I said before, however I would feel, I would not be automatically enobled regardless of what I do. A group might be fighting against this outside army for ethnic or religious rivalries, or to spread a fascistic ideology, like the Taliban/al-Qaeda of current Afghanistan, or the National Socialist part fighting against a humiliating occupation by WW1 allies. We shouldn't be forced to turn insurgent fighters into automatic heroes in order to oppose these wars.

And as for that quote, was this Vietnamese fighter captured and this was what he said about his motivations?

Shirin, if you think I said anything out of line about you, go ahead and say so.

Inkan,
The subject wars before us are Iraq and Afghanistan, and Vietnam before those because we are discussing the relatively new term "counterinsurgency" which has been widely used, incorrectly, for US actions in those conflicts. I am on a crusade to stamp out use of the term, for the reasons stated above.

And as for that quote, was this Vietnamese fighter captured and this was what he said about his motivations?

Inkan, if we would generalize about the history of warfare we would say that it basically consists of citizens of one country invading another, involving the killing of the citizens of that country, with the concomitant actions of the citizens in the attacked country defending their country by trying to kill the attackers. (Often the warfare spills over into third countries, but let's keep it simple.)

These are not insurgents but defenders, and when it comes to it, occupation resisters.

It is in this context that Mike Hastie said, quite understandably, and w/o any need for prisoner interrogation:
"The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country."

It's as obvious as the nose on your face. I'm surprised that you have trouble with it. Or perhaps you were just trying to be cute.