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( Insurgency)
There are no universally accepted definitions of insurgency, but the term is definitely not unique to the United States. The common concept, in a wide range of definitions, is that it involves a desire for political power, achieved through means illegal under the rules of the existing government, but that does not work for all current insurgencies. Returning to address the question of "insurgency" being a recent term for opposition to the U.S. in Iraq (i.e., the "Iraqi insurgency"), the French expert on Indochina and Vietnam, Bernard Fall, entitled one of his major books Street without joy insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. [1] Fall himself, however, wrote later on that "revolutionary warfare" might be a more accurate term. [2] Insurgency has been used for years in professional military literature. Under the British, the situation in Malaya (now Malaysia) was often called the "Malayan insurgency". [3], or "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Insurgencies have existed in many countries and regions, including the Philippines, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Djibouti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, the American colonies of Great Britain, and the Confederate States of America.[4] Each had different specifics but share the property of an attempt to disrupt the central government by means considered illegal by that government. North points out, however, that insurgents today need not be part of a highly organized movement "Some are networked with only loose objectives and mission-type orders to enhance their survival. Most are divided and factionalized by area, composition, or goals. Strike one against the current definition of insurgency. It is not relevant to the enemies we face today. Many of these enemies do not currently seek the overthrow of a constituted government...weak government control is useful and perhaps essential for many of these “enemies of the state” to survive and operate."[5] Military analysts have expressed concern over a perceived overemphasis, by various politicians and media in the Western world on it being unique to Iraq, who call the opposition there the "Iraqi insurgency". Admittedly, the term has been used to describe the guerilla resistance to the US-led coalition forces and the new Iraqi Government in Iraq[6]) While the U.S. news media tend to regard insurgencies as the villains in a situation, so did Great Britain regard the rebellious American colonists at the Battle of Lexington. The Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong was an insurgency, following a conceptual model about which he wrote extensively.[7] Insurgency is far more than what politicians and journalists oversimplify as the Global War on Terror which deals only with one tactic, is inaccurate for the U.S. since it does not fight all terror worldwide, and is a term that does not include the political and other nonviolent means needed to defeat an insurgency The term “war on terrorism” is a misnomer, resulting in distorted ideas of the main threat facing Americans today. Terrorism is only a means to an end; in this respect, a “war on terror” makes no more sense than a war on submarines.
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