A few days ago I came across an article, in which the following paragraph appears.
The Obama administration is considering putting the Pentagon in charge of arming and training moderate rebel forces in Syria, a move that could help expand the effort significantly beyond the limited scope of the current Central Intelligence Agency program, U.S. officials said.
via Buzzflash, quoting the Wall Street Journal
I consider myself something of a student of history, and I think I can say with some assurance that moderates (most relevant definition from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: “Not extreme in opinion, not strongly partisan, designating or pertaining to any of various political or ecclesiastical parties avoiding extreme views”) rarely become rebels, and, in the event of a successful rebellion, moderates rarely run the show. One might argue that the American Revolution was an exception, but there's reason to argue that was not a true revolution, and in any event, if it's an exception, it proves the rule. Certainly Syria bids fair to emulate Iran (the “moderates” ended up in front of firing squads) rather than colonial America.
Of course language is an elastic thing. If it suits the administration to call people in rebellion “moderates” it will do so; the question is why the Wall Street Journal, or any newspaper, would simply accept the designation. But this misuse of language is ordinary operating procedure. Consider the use of the word “rebel”. It is rarely applied to those of whom we do not approve, for the word has a certain romantic cachet. If we do not approve, the “rebel” morphs into a “militant”. These words have not completely lost all meaning, but their use often tells us more about the person using them than the person(s) to whom they are applied.
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