This morning in the car I was listening to John Robbie discuss the fighting in Fallujah on Radio 702. At one point he abruptly interrupted his script to complain about the Pentagon’s use of the word “insurgents” in press released. “First it was ‘Saddam loyalists’ and ‘Baathists’”, Robbie sneered. “And then it was just plain ‘terrorists’. Now it’s ‘insurgents’. I wonder what they’ll come up with next?”

This probably goes without saying, but John Robbie is full of it. The fact is, America is fighting people in Iraq, and in order to be able to discuss this war, we need to call them something. And technically, this war is an insurgency, so what’s the problem?

Look, an insurgency is just a type of war. An insurgent is someone who fights in an insurgency. It’s a value-neutral term. Similar to “guerrillas”, “regulars” or “special forces”, your opinion on insurgents will depend entirely on which side you’re on.

In fact, I think the term “insurgents” is pretty damn generous on the part of the US. Considering that we’re talking about people who generally avoid fighting US troops wherever possible, and whose modus operandi includes stuff like launching suicide bombings against Iraqi schoolgirls, “terrorists” would be a perfectly appropriate term here.

What would make John Robbie happy? If they talked about “brave Iraqi freedom fighters struggling against the yoke of foreign domination”? Yeah, that would probably do it.