IN A TUESDAY article about escalating violence in Baghdad's Green Zone, The New York Times continued to use the term "insurgent" to describe individuals who resist the U.S. and British occupation. Although there have been countless Bush administration speeches and press releases as well as media articles and editorials reporting "insurgent" attacks, the use of "insurgent" remains newsworthy as a propaganda phenomenon and as a barometer of popular support for our invasion of Iraq.
Linguistics Prof. Peter Baker reminded me in an interview that originally the administration and media used the term "terrorist" to describe Iraqi resistance fighters. Today, the media uses "insurgent" nearly without exception and even the administration uses "insurgent" as well as "terrorist." The evolution of the language used to dehumanize the victims of occupation illustrates both continuing elite denial of Iraqi humanity as well as incipient pragmatic criticism of the invasion.
"Terrorist" dehumanizes more completely than "insurgent." Terrorists, as President Bush has reminded us on numerous occasions, are motivated by hateful, destructive, misanthropic impulses. After Bush's absurd "mission accomplished" declaration aboard the Lincoln aircraft carrier in May 2003, and in the context of rapid growth of both al-Qaeda and the U.S. death toll in Iraq, some pragmatic supporters of American exceptionalism have begun to question the efficacy of this invasion.
History Prof. Tico Braun, whose writings deal extensively with political violence in Colombia, suggests that the declining use of "terrorist" and increasing use of "insurgent" "is a sign of grudging respect," signaling elite realization of the allegedly unanticipated consequences of suppressing a local population. Thus, from this perspective, media use of "insurgent" represents doubt about long-term prospects for U.S. domination of Iraq.
Despite recognition of the difficulties of occupation, through the use of "insurgent" the media continues to deny the resistance legitimacy. "Insurgents" destabilize for the sake of instability. While they may be harder to conquer than the military anticipated, they still fail to merit designation as "freedom fighters." While the word "insurgent" could allow for humanization of the rebels, in the present case it does not. Rather, it is a designation for less than human foreigners who kill our soldiers, while "terrorists" focus on civilians. Perhaps the media deserves praise for acknowledging that the "insurgents" have the occupying army rather than civilians as their primary target. We should not credit them, however, with recognizing the legitimacy of resistance against that army; their use of "insurgent" suggests that our army is the victim of malicious attacks by less than rational, if somewhat effective, savages.
Media use of "insurgent" also essentializes resistance fighters as fundamentally violent and destabilizing. They not only act today or tomorrow in an insurgent fashion; they are insurgents. As Anthropology Prof. Ellen Contini-Morava points out, a label such as "insurgent" makes that the Iraqis' defining characteristic. The use of "insurgent" to imply violent aggression is ironic, given that the United States and Britain attacked Iraq without provocation. Under any empirical measure, we remain the aggressors. By entering the homes of Iraqi citizens at will, by detaining any individuals without charges or representation and by using torture to intimidate the local population, we have created an atmosphere of terror in Iraq. In this context, the "insurgents [who] detonated a car bomb in the Al Shartta Alkhmisa neighborhood as an American convoy drove by (NY Times)" are defending themselves and their families against a foreign power that murders with impunity.
Instead, the Bush administration and the media represent the invaders as the victims of aggressive violence. As Contini-Morava notes, insurgency is devoid of resistance's positive connotations. Whereas resistance implies defensive action based on a just cause, insurgency implies aggressive violence.
If the media were interested in impartial reporting of the war against Iraq, or recognized the possibility of the essential fallibility of American imperial power, they would not use the term "insurgent" in a similar context as they used "terrorist." It is not the only word that could describe individuals who use violence to defend their home against an occupying army -- it is the most convenient. Baker states that the use of "rebel," one alternative term, might "lay out a little too openly the relationship between us
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