Freedom Fighters vs Insurgents

[Horushawk]

I want to know the difference. The question comes from reports from the media any given day. (Suicide bombers blow up "blah, blah, blah...".) To me anyone that is ready to blow themselves up, sounds like a freedom fighter to me.

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.



From dictionary.com --

in·sur·gent (n-sûrjnt)
adj.
Rising in revolt against established authority, especially a government.
Rebelling against the leadership of a political party.

n.
One who is insurgent.

freedom fighter
n.
One engaged in armed rebellion or resistance against an oppressive government.


freedom fighter

n : a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions)

[KurtNYC]

1. If a crime fighter fights crime, a freedom fighter fights ?

Shouldn't it technically be 'fighter FOR freedom' ?

[Oreo]

2. It depends on what side you look at it....

The French Resistance were freedom fighters but did they do anything differently from what the "Insurgents" are doing now? Since we're the high and mighty, do no wrong United States, of course they're not going to be called freedom fighters because they hate freedom!

It's not worth looking at anything shrub does rationally... he's not capable of rational thoughts or actions

[TO Kid]

11. Funny, I didn't know the Resistance targeted shoppers

Right, we know there's absolutely no difference between shooting at foreign soldiers and cutting off the heads of people fixing the water pipes.

[Ms. Clio]

15. Yeah, beheadings are the only standard of barbarity

Yadda yadda yadda.

[DrWeird]

3. Iraqi insurgents = Wolverines

Dr. Weird: makes more freepers' heads explode before 9 AM than most DUers do all day.

[Dr Strangelove]

4. French Freedom Fighters

as we like to call them, were viewed by the Nazi's as insurgents. It's a point of view thing

[K-W]

5. Freedom fighter doesnt fit in Iraq, insurgency doesn't either.

Both imply that the US is the government of Iraq, it is not, it is an occupying foriegn power.

This isnt a group of people fighting for freedom from an opressive government, it is a group of people who had thier oppressive government overthrown and replaced by a military occupation. Nobody sprung up, the resistance has existed since day 1.

[RuleofLaw]

6. Resistance

I think the most accurate description is Resistance:

"often Resistance An underground organization engaged in a struggle for national liberation in a country under military or totalitarian occupation."

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=resistance

[Horushawk]

7. Viva La Resistance!!!

LOL

That is what I was looking for!


Thanks!

[BuyingThyme]

8. U.S. troops are more insurgent than the "insurgents"

[Cocoa]

9. muslim terrorists were "freedom fighters" in the 80's

go rent "Rambo III" or read below:

http://www.fair.org/extra/0201/afghanistan-80s.html

<snip>

The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether. While some newspapers favored some restraint in the degree of U.S. military support for the Mujahiddin (notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post) and others (like the Wall Street Journal) favored a more open-ended policy, these differences were only matters of degree. Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were "heroic," "courageous" and above all "freedom fighters."

To the editors of the centrist New Republic (6/13/83), the Mujahiddin were "fighting the good fight," while an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (12/30/87) celebrated "the heroic struggle waged by the Afghan freedom fighters." According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): "The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle.... The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware."

A columnist in the Christian Science Monitor (1/9/87) placed the Mujahiddin among the great heroes of recent times:
Heroes come in many shapes and sizes.... The civil rights leaders who led American blacks to equality that society had denied them. The Sakharovs who have held up the flame of freedom in the Soviet Union. The tattered Vietnamese refugees who put to sea in leaky boats. The Afghan freedom fighters.

In an editorial (12/27/84), the Washington Post offered this encomium to the Afghan rebels:
They managed to put down a brave resistance. Simple people, fighting with hand-me-down weapons, have borne tremendous costs and kept a modern well-armed state from imposing an alien political will. The fight for freedom in Afghanistan is an awesome spectacle and deserves generous tribute.

More…

[alexisfree]

10. if china invaded usa i thing freedom fighters would best fit..the same in

iraq.

[Taxloss]

12. They're neither.

They're not fighting for freedom, they want a religious-nationalist state. An they're not really insurgents, since this combat has been going on since the day the first Coalition soldier stepped into Iraq.

They're just fighters. Oppositionists. Rejectionists.

[K-W]

13. Resistance is probably the best term,

but freedom fighter doesnt mean a fighter for absolute freedom, just that they are fighting for freedom from an oppressive regime.

Had a group of Iraqi's risen up against saddam they would have been both freedom fighters and insurgents, but since they are fighting a foriegn occupier and not thier own government, they are resistance fighters.

[Taxloss]

14. Yes, you're probably right. It's morally neutral.

The "resistance" are no cause to celebrate, far from it. But the invasion and occupation they fight was and is wrong. So it's "two wrongs don't make a right".

Or, to put it another way, "Do you idiots see what we were protesting about now?".