When do insurgents become freedom fighters?

[ACPlayer]

18 killed in Karbala.
Fighting in Najaf, Fallujah, Kufa, .......

So, when exactly is an insurgency a freedom movement?

[GWB]

[ QUOTE ]
18 killed in Karbala.
Fighting in Najaf, Fallujah, Kufa, .......

So, when exactly is an insurgency a freedom movement?

[/ QUOTE ]
For starters, they would have to be fighting for the real freedom of their people. So that rules out your example.

Here is another Country for which the US wants democracy

[ACPlayer]

Dunno if this is an insurgency or freedom movement yet. Unfortunately there is no one with any credibility who speaks to this from an official capacity.

Just wondering when the line gets crossed.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

So, when exactly is an insurgency a freedom movement?

When you agree with their goal.

[sam h]

[ QUOTE ]
For starters, they would have to be fighting for the real freedom of their people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. Just like the Contras and the Afghan mujahideen.

[elwoodblues]

Ding, Ding, Ding...and the prize goes to: Kurn, son of Mogh.

Monty, tell him what he's won.

[jdl22]

I think this is exactly right.

Consider ETA and the IRA. Both of these groups consider themselves freedom fighters others consider them terrorists.

Same goes for ours, the Israeli, and any other country's military fighting an enemy accross their border. You hear people all the time say things like "be sure to thank the soldiers for fighting for freedom." Apparently the people firing rpgs at them don't feel the same way.

[Gamblor]

Freedom fighters do NOT kill innocent pregnant mothers and their four little girls in cold blood.

[CORed]

I think you're right in the sense that most of the people fighting against us don't want "freedom" as we define it: An elected representative government with civil rights guarantees, but I bet most of them want "freedom" from foreign occupation. I also like Kurn's definition.

[Chris Alger]

These terms are so subjective and laden with propaganda that they're just correlates of the politics of whoever is using them.

The real issue is whether the occupying power is fulfilling its responsibilities (its "rights" are nonexistent) under the Fourth Geneva Convention and other interntional law. When it isn't, the predictable result is violence, the efficacy and morality of which is debatable. If those in control of the occupier resist reform but try to rationalize their illegitimate use of authority by invoking the frequency and mode of the violence, their guilty of a particularly crude and illogical form of propaganda, one that we'd see right through if used by any other party. Imagine, for example, for the Nazis in Poland or the Russians in Afghanistan complaining about "terrorism" against their occupation.