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“History and Mystery”

Hitchens’ commentary on an NY Times OpEd piece titled “The Mystery of the Insurgency” about violence in Iraq in 2005. Hitchens violently disagrees with calling the perpetrators “insurgents” and “practically plead[s] with the authors to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for [the NYTs]to go on calling them insurgents.”  He argues that the campaign of violence is not a war of independence from US occupation, but “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…”

He concludes, “It’s time for respectable outlets to drop the word [insurgent], to call things by their right names (Baathist or bin Ladenist or jihad-ist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.” 

New Learning: Jihad-ists in Iraq killed UN envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, for his role in helping East Timor become independent from Muslin Indonesia.

Mr. Mello with Est Timor President Xanana Gusmao in 2002:

Old word, properly defined: “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 jihad-ist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist. 

Link to NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/weekinreview/15bennet.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0