Hitchens Isn't My Fav, But He Is Right On This

[Annie]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2118820/

History and Mystery
Why does the New York Times insist on calling jihadists "insurgents"?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, May 16, 2005, at 10:09 AM PT

U.S. soldier frisks an Iraqi man

When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair. A doozy classic led the "Week in Review" section on Sunday. Portentously headed "The Mystery of the Insurgency," the article rubbed its eyes at the sheer lunacy and sadism of the Iraqi car bombers and random murderers. At a time when new mass graves are being filled, and old ones are still being dug up, writer James Bennet practically pleaded with the authors of both to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for his paper to go on calling them "insurgents."

I don't think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown's downtown as "insurgents." But it does employ this title every day for the gang headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. With pedantic exactitude, and unless anyone should miss the point, this man has named his organization "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" and sought (and apparently received) Osama Bin Laden's permission for the franchise. Did al-Qaida show "interest in winning hearts and minds … in building international legitimacy … in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology," or any of the other things plaintively mentioned as lacking by Mr. Bennet? [...]

A letter from Zarqawi to Bin Laden more than a year ago, intercepted by Kurdish intelligence and since then well-authenticated, spoke of Shiism as a repulsive heresy and the ignition of a Sunni-Shiite civil war as the best and easiest way to thwart the Crusader-Zionist coalition. The actions since then have precisely followed the design, but the design has been forgotten by the journal of record. The Bin Laden and Zarqawi organizations, and their co-thinkers in other countries, have gone to great pains to announce, on several occasions, that they will win because they love death, while their enemies are so soft and degenerate that they prefer life. Are we supposed to think that they were just boasting when they said this? Their actions demonstrate it every day, and there are burned-out school buses and clinics and hospitals to prove it, as well as mosques (the incineration of which one might think to be a better subject for Islamic protest than a possibly desecrated Quran, in a prison where every inmate is automatically issued with one.)

[...]This campaign of horror began before Baghdad fell, with the execution and mutilation of those who dared to greet American and British troops. It continued with the looting of the Baghdad museum and other sites, long before there could have been any complaint about the failure to restore power or security. It is an attempt to put Iraqi Arabs and Kurds, many of them still traumatized by decades of well-founded fear, back under the heel of the Baath Party or under a home-grown Taliban, or the combination of both that would also have been the Odai/Qusai final solution. Half-conceding the usefulness of chaos and misery in bringing this about, Bennet in his closing paragraph compares jihadism to 19th-century anarchism, which shows that he hasn't read Proudhon or Bakunin or Kropotkin either.

In my ears, "insurgent" is a bit like "rebel" or even "revolutionary." There's nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean "rising up." These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.

 

[Adam's Apple]

It's refreshing to read a column by a liberal questioning the NY Times on it reporting practices. Too bad it isn't done more often. Probably should print this out and save it as a "once in a lifetime" occurrence.

 

[William Joyce]

It's refreshing to read a column by a liberal questioning the NY Times on it reporting practices. Too bad it isn't done more often. Probably should print this out and save it as a "once in a lifetime" occurrence.

Hitchens is a Jew. A Jew knocking coverage of the war that skews anti-Jewish isn't a "once in a lifetime" occurrence... it happens every minute of every day!

 

[dmp]

Great piece...