Quote Originally Posted by AmericanPride View Post
Rex,

That is why I consider the MB, in general, as a shade of gray of insurgency. Yes -- the Egyptian faction (as well as the Jordanian, Somalian and Tunisian factions) have more or less abdicated violence. But because of the organization's revisionist agenda that aims to redraw the region's political order driven in large part by a (largely accurate) perception of Western interference and a general failure of the Arab states to reach modernity, I think its activities amount to subversion disguised in democracy.
I think this may hinge on one's definition of insurgency. The DoD definition is "an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict" (JP 1-02, and FM 3-24) or possibly "An insurgency is an organized, armed political struggle whose goal may be the seizure of power through revolutionary takeover and replacement of the existing government." (FM 100-20). In both definitions, the notion of armed violence is a necessary condition. While that applies to Hamas, it doesn't apply to the contemporary Jordanian and Egyptian MB.

I'm extremely wary about expanding "insurgency" to embrace non-violent movements for political change—which I prefer to call, well, "politics". There's nothing to be gained, in my view, in trying to shoe-horn it into a COINdinista frame of reference.