Neil -

I think you have only to go back to the recent Tamil Tigers thread (the one discussing the death of Prabhakaran) to get the general consensus that (a) the LTTE were de facto terrorists, and (b) the West made a gross mistake in treating (even temporarily) the LTTE as a legitimate political actor.

My point was not who supports whom doing what or even what rationale they give for that support. My point was how specific words are artificially and successfully introduced into common parlance as a means to shape and control political debate, and that the left has been the overwhelmingly successful practitioner of this in America.

The term “insurgent” was deliberately dredged up from arcane academic & military usage and applied virtually non-stop in MSM reports as a one-size-fits-all word to describe what even that neanderthal word-strangler, President Bush, allowed for a little more nuance as “a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists.”

So I will admit an error in my last post in suggesting that “terrorist” was the only other term that could have applied where “insurgent” was used. But again, my point was that where people were committing terrorism, the term “terrorist” should have been used. Unfortunately, the media (even Fox News to my recollection) fell into the disingenuous and lazy habit of calling just about every anti-American-effort actor in Iraq an “insurgent.” And a lot of news organizations and pundits did this deliberately to paper over the moral horror of the de facto terrorism that was taking place.

You may recall that, right around the same time that “insurgent” was being injected into our common language, the term “freedom fries” (as a substitute for French fries, after the French govt stabbed us in the back at the UN) was attempted by the right.

“Freedom fries” was rightfully ridiculed, pretty much ignored, and flopped. The same fate *should* have befallen the term “insurgent.” Both were articifial language impositions of a political nature. But one succeeded while the other failed. The successful one had the backing of the left and the majority of the American media.

Hmmmm…..