Terrorist or Insurgents -- the reasoning behind the debate

Wretchard over at Belmont Club analyzes the assumptions underlying the BBC's use of the term "insurgents" to describe radical Islamist terrorists.

Although the proposition that organized international terrorism does not exist may seem funny, many writers on the Left seriously believe that terrorism is a derivative phenomenon with no independent existence of its own. It is simply a reaction to Western, and particularly American oppression. It is the shadow, as it were, of the USA, which would cease to exist once the solid being that gave rise to it vanished. According to this point of view, it is entirely correct to refer to terrorists as 'insurgents', 'resistants', 'militants' or even 'freedom fighters', because they have no actual violent goals arising from their consciousness except as are suggested to them by their oppressor; entirely correct refer to them as 'phantoms' because they do not exist of themselves, except as emergent phenomenon in relation to the United States.

Read the whole thing here. It's pretty devastating, and disturbing too. The idiocy and moral imbecility of today's "left" is not just stunning -- it is dangerous.