US and Iraqi troops have killed at least 300 militants in battles around the holy city of Najaf, officials say.
Ummm. Yeah.
I cutted and pasted dat for ye.
At least, that's what THEY want you to call the dudes with guns in Najaf who aren't in military uniform. "Militants". Funny, isn't it? If you have a uniform and an officer/soldier hierarchy, you have a license to kill people in their countries according to the rules of international "law". But if a bunch of cunts who wanted to believe their military-industrial complex's lies..ooops..I mean, their government's lies...if a bunch o' these college-fund-grubbing cunts in beige camo come plopping into your desert, dangling from parachutes and roaring across the dunes in Humvees™, you might want to pick up a bargain basement AK-46, oops...47...for yourself. But if you do, you're an insurgent....an "unlawful combattant", not protected by the laws of man, nor those of beast. You're a...a...
Militant.
Which, one would imagine, means someone who has something to do with military shit. But no. English is weird that way. So are most languages, when left to the devices of despots and national broadcasting corporations. Having known more than a few people who've had stuff to do with military-type shit, and having heard none of them refer to themselves as "militants", I must assume that the term means something else. I posit the twain:
"MIlitant" means either:
a) Civilians who have somehow fashoned AK-47s out of old Motorola cases and Cambell's tin cans;
b) Soldiers who split Saddam's army the second the plopping and roaring of the U.S.M.C. thundered across the Babylonian plains.
Guess which one?
It seems a little unfair that if some cunt comes into your country with a machine gun, you're supposed to wear the uniform that'll get your head shot off. Or if you don't it means you're a terr'ist criminal. It doesn't matter which side of The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.) you're on, the rules of combat just don't seem right. Weren't the French underground our heroes in WW2?
What would be wrong with writing the following, instead?
"US and neo-Iraqi troops have killed at least 300 pro-Saddam, Baathist troops in battles around the holy city of Najaf, officials say."
You know, actually. It would be very wrong. THEY wouldn't like it as much as:
"US and Iraqi troops have killed at least 300 militants in battles around the holy city of Najaf, officials say."
Which is what THEY got THEIR minions to write on an internationally-known website. Recently.
And even if you're a right-wing cunt, you've got to admit it. And avoid the question of WMD's, al Qaeda and 9-11.
If The Forces of God really do decide to bomb Iran, I wonder what those warriors will be called. "Insurgent" and "Militant" will seem a little time-worn by then.
Perhaps we should go back to the lexicon of the Hungarian uprising of '56 and just call 'em "Freedom Fighters". That's how they see themselves, and there's more of them than there are U.S. and U.K. dudes in uniform...
The Turning of the Worms
