Where does the word "insurgent" come from?

I hear and read in the media about "insurgents".

Last time I checked, one sovereign state attacks another sovereign state, and occupies thier land. State B never declared war nor directly attacked State A.

Now, the people of State B want their land back.

The British had a better case for calling the American Revolutionaries "insurgents" than the media of today has to calling Iraqis "insurgents".

This term just pisses me off.

 

I read it 3 times just to make sure....

Lets see. US invades Iraq who had never attacked or declared war on US. US removes indigenous government and replaces it one more to its liking. US troops occupy old leaders palaces and take over his prisons which they use to imprison and torture Iraqi citizens. Occupation goes on for years....

Iraqi people of various factions internal and external (like the US revolutionaries aided by Poland and France...) want occupier out and form groups of insurgents to accomplish this.

Insurgents seems like a fair term to me.

 

Perhaps I simply do not understand the term, I take insurgent to mean rebel. When the south seceded from the north, they were considered rebels. Rebels seek to overthrow a legitamite government. The present government in Iraq is not a legitimate government. That government is the usurpation of a dictator from an outsite source. The people of that state did not remove the dictator.

To call men who are fighting to regain land that was taken from them cannot be called an "insurgency".

I appears to my simple mind that if a group of people are fighting to get foreign invaders off of their soil, insurgent would not be the right word.

If I had a problem with the mayor of your town, and I had the resources to have him removed, and he simply came up missing one day, you might not have a problem with that if you didn't like your mayor. However, if I remove your mayor, and then decide that I want all of your houses painted green and placed my men on the streets of your town to enforce that, you might not go quietly along with this.

If you decide to resist my painting your house green, are you a rebel, or are you defending the right to keep your house the color it originally was?

 

In world war II the US news media called these people "the underground". I expect that the nazi's called them insurgents.

 

This is the same feeling that I get. I come to chit chat, and read about "the war effort", and about killing arabs. It is sad to see that there are a sizable degree of humans that will still condemn an entire people for the actions of a few. Unbelievable.

Terror is terror, and it is looking more and more like we have decended to the level of the evil that we claim to be fighting.

 

With a career that spanned nearly thirty years working for DOD and peripheral organizations, it was clear to me that we could have sent Iraq a clear message by bombing their palaces and government buildings to rubble without ever putting any boots on the ground. After all, it worked with Kadafi when we bombed his digs. It obviously scared the living hell out of him and now he wants to be our buddy.

Consequently, this Iraq war was entirely unnecessary and the majority of politicians either were too stupid to realize it, or they had other vested interests in starting it. I don't know which but all who voted for it should be replaced.

Furthermore, you can't expect much better from a professional volunteer military. As soon as they join, they agree to be morally corrupted. They will kill whoever they are told to attack for a pitiful salary or college tuition, a pension or whatever. The military is their best financial option and they go in for that reason. With a minority of exceptions, they are the lowest of the low. I worked with them every day and saw very few exceptions.

 

I think insurgent is about as neutral as you can get. It's not a value judgement, it simply describes the fact that a group is fighting against an established authority. It doesn't imply any legitimacy on the part of either the authority or the opposition.

If you want to vilify call them terrorists, if you want to idolize call them freedom fighters. If you just want to report call them insurgents.

Martin

 

The word “insurgent” is accurate because there is an infinitesimal number of people resisting the occupation, out of 26 million Iraqis. If they had any real significance, you would call them “rebels” part of a “rebellion,” leading to a “civil war.”

Everyone knows who the insurgents are: they are mostly Sunnis. They are losing the fight and are now resorting to the desperate measures of making “martyrs” out of their own families. Saddam’s regime favored the Sunnis. Global Islamofacism is Sunni. Therefore, in order to include both the Islamists and the Sunni nationalist troublemakers, and account for their relative smallness in size, you call them “insurgents.”

 

<i>The word “insurgent” is accurate because there is an infinitesimal number of people resisting the occupation, out of 26 million Iraqis. If they had any real significance, you would call them “rebels” part of a “rebellion,” leading to a “civil war.”</i>

That's a nice theory that has nothing to do with the English language. "Insurgent" and "rebel" are synonyms.

<i>They are losing the fight and are now resorting to the desperate measures of making “martyrs” out of their own families.</i>

You and I must be watching different fights.

Martin

 

You have made some interesting claims.

Educate me.

How do you know that this "Islamofascism" is mostly Sunni supported? Also, the term "Islamofascism" implies that they seek global domination of the world.

Is there evidence to support this?

Or, have they been labeled this because they oppose an outside culture trying to tell them how to live?