We've Seen the Enemy and They Are ... Who, Exactly?That's because they're g**d***** terrorists -- nothing more. Let's start calling a hand-held excavating tool a spade.
By EDWARD WONG
Published: October 17, 2004
BAGHDAD — To hear the American commanders in Iraq tell it, William Butler Yeats could well be the poet laureate of Iraq's insurgency. If the guerrillas were to win this war with their suicide car bombs and televised beheadings, what would come next? Nothing, the commanders say, but a widening gyre, and things falling apart, and, finally, mere anarchy being loosed in the cradle of civilization.
"This is a negative insurgency," Brig. Gen. Erwin Lessel, deputy director of operations for the multinational forces, said in an interview inside the fortified American headquarters here, near where two powerful bombs killed five people on Thursday and left the Americans bracing for more mayhem at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. "Unlike a classical insurgency, these groups don't offer anything."
"They've got differing goals, competing ideologies,'' he continued, "and don't offer anything positive for the government."...
Sunday, October 17, 2004
None Dare Call It Terrorism?
Why do the media -- and even the military in Iraq -- insist on dignifying terrorism by calling it insurgency. Latest case in point, from the Times:
