Watch out. Before you know it, we’ll all be referring to a war on terrorism freedom fighters. It’s already started. Instead of referring to what looks, walks and quacks like a terrorist a terrorist, the shift to “insurgents” and “guerrillas” has begun.
ABC News illustrates this nicely. A news headline of a recent attack on an Iraqi prison by anti-coalition terrorists remarked, “Insurgents Kill 22, Wound 92 in Baghdad.”
The AP, who composed the story, made liberal use of the word insurgent and the like.
Guerrillas fired a barrage of mortar rounds at Baghdad’s largest prison Tuesday, killing 22 prisoners in an attack a U.S. general said may have been an attempt to spark an uprising against their American guards.
[…]
U.S. Marines patrolling Baghdad discovered the area the mortars were fired from, but the insurgents had fled, Morgenthaler said.
[…]
Also Tuesday, Iraqi security forces, some wearing flak jackets and carrying weapons, moved back into the besieged city of Fallujah, part of an agreement between U.S. officials and local leaders aimed at ending hostilities. The accord calls on insurgents to hand in their weapons and allows civilians to return.
And it goes on and on.
Gone are the days of the terrorist. The insurgent is here to stay. But this is more than just a semantic argument.
An insurgent is defined as one who takes part in an armed rebellion against authority. Sure, that could fit. But so could terrorist, defined as one who employs terror as a political weapon.
As is always said, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. The sad thing is that for many outside of Iraq, the very same “freedom fighters” that wish to maim and mutilate the bodies of American soldiers are just that, no longer “terrorists.”
But the confusion doesn’t stop there.
The use of suicide bomber as opposed to homicide bomber naturally shifts our focus onto the individual as opposed to his victims. And the use of gunmen is also suspect.
Indeed, politically correct language is here to stay. I just thought it would take a little while longer for it to creep into our fight against terrorism.