It’s the Iraqi Resistance, Stupid
I’ve been using the term for years, but isn’t it finally time, nearly four years into the occupation of Iraq, for the American media to join the rest of the world? That’s right. It’s time to stop calling the Iraqis who are resisting our oppressive presence “insurgents” and use a word that fits a lot better: “resistants.”
I know. They don’t wear berets or blow up Nazis. They don’t look like the French Resistance, which virtually defines the word in the American psyche. But the media has already quietly dropped the fiction that the Iraqi government is sovereign. Most press accounts refer to the “occupation.”
The Iraqi resistance fits the bill in all the important ways: they are using violence to resist the U.S. occupation and its puppet regime. More importantly, “insurgency” implies a nascent movement that may or may not last. You can have an insurgency for a year or two. What we have now looks more permanent. Can anyone imagine a scenario in which the Iraqis put away their guns and IEDs before we leave?
1 Comment.
It may have been a resistance initially, but now it's full-out sectarian civil war, just like the 1930s after the British left. If the Americans leave, it will basically give carte blanche for the Kurds to separate (and hope they don't get invaded by Turkey), and for the Shia and Sunni communities to do a medieval version of "Survivor". No further American troops will be killed, but that would be about the only good news in Iraq.