Donald Rumsfeld’s “epiphany” that the Iraqi insurgents aren’t insurgents (they don’t have a “legitimate gripe” I guess) is nothing new. The Soviet Union went to great lengths to characterize the Afghan resistance as “bandits.” Why the Bush Jong Il administration doesn’t simply and repeatedly call those fighting the US military in Iraq “terrorists,” a tactic they tried for a while, I don’t know.
The term bandits reminds me of another time and place when US forces were at war in a not-so-far away foreign land. It was the 1920s, and Augusto Sandino’s fighters had roughly 750 US Marines outfoxed in Nicaragua. As described in one-time Guatemala President Juan Jose Aravalo’s book The Shark and the Sardines, it was a fight no one could win, and by the late 1920s — but before the crash — some in Congress became very concerned over the continuing US military operations in Nicaragua.
At one point, a stupid semantic dispute erupted over exactly what to call Sandino and his soldiers. In order to deprive them of any political legitimacy, the USMC (General LeJeune, I believe, though I may be wrong — it has been a long time since I read the book, and I am citing from memory), had taken to calling them “bandits.” One senator pressed him on the meaning of that term. “Anyone who is a member of a band,” the Marine official replied.
“So, does that mean John Phillips Sousa is a bandit?” the senator asked.
Wish we had such senators today.
12:40 pm on November 30, 2005
