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 … Continue reading Word Games