Its almost like a Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy joke, if it weren’t so damn scary.

That does not mean we, as witness to the Syrian Civil War, can’t make judgement calls on what kind of people are fighting in Syria.

Terrorists are outside the Geneva Conventions’ protections because of how the conventions are worded. 

Also I think your assessment of Libya is particularly negative. Any burgeoning nation that is emerging from decades of dictatorship is bound to start off rocky. The phrase “various factions cannot form a decent government and are still fighting amongst each other” perfectly describes Italy and a host of other nations at the present moment anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/nOA3yBG.gif

The slingshot photo above, for example, has soldiers milling about, smiling, looking relaxed while ostensibly launching bombs at active targets who are politely not returning fire. Another, the first in the actual article, has a slingshot that looks to be strung with rope, or some other non-elastic material, such that throwing the grenade would probably be more effective.

There’s a third slingshot photo that looks more plausible, but the usage of the slingshots in the first place is suspect. They’re large, immobile, low-powered launching platforms with a limited ability to aim and a limited payload. Who or what are they being fired at? Why are hand-thrown grenades any less effective? Why go to the trouble of cobbling together all this scrap metal into a big, cumbersome, noticeable machine that doesn’t really do anything your arm couldn’t already do?

Except for when the dictator is in the good graces of the US, in which case when they fight the kind of government we think is bad they are still terrorists.  Unless it looks like they might win in which case the US will decry the horrible dictator and throw its — mostly rhetorical — support behind the terrorists — who have now become rebels by virtue of looking like they might win.

The important thing to remember here is that a democratic government imposed by an invading foreign power could not possibly be undesirable or oppressive in any way to the people being invaded.  Therefore any people rebelling against such a government are by definition terrorists.

On the other hand, if the US has an interest in undermining a democratic government and replacing it with a dictator (see Iran) those fighting the democratic government are “rebels,” not “terrorists” (see paragraph 2).

It’s no different than “enemies” and “allies”, really.

Hence Assad tortures captured opposition forces, and when called on it says “they’re terrorists, and even the U.S. tortures terrorists”.

What an example and precedent we’ve set. Rolling back 60 years of human rights progress with one semantical swoop, and a dash of Dick Cheney.

One of the attackers was a medical doctor, the other was an engineer working on his PhD.  And yet neither of them apparently twigged that flammable gas isn’t going to explode if it’s not well mixed with a source of oxygen.

In Iraq the “rebels” were rebelling against the occupying forces and the democratic government they were trying to set up. They already had their freedom from Saddam . Now they are fighting to blow shit up and cause havoc, hence they are terrorists.

So I think that is why the words are used in that way. I am trying to think about a war where “our side” wasn’t with the rebels. Egypt played nice with us, but they still had rebels. I don’t recall what they called the sides in the Balkans.

“Rebels” conjures up an image of some nobel, righteous warrior standing up to the big oppressor like in Star Wars or something. But these guys are essentially using the same low budget guerilla warfare tactics as al-Qaeda.

…Free Syrian Army fighter uses a catapult…

Trebuchet, goddamit, trebuchet!