Civil War In Iraq?
Yes, says Krauthammer:
This whole debate about civil war is surreal. What is the insurgency if not a war supported by one (minority) part of Iraqi society fighting to prevent the birth of the new Iraqi state supported by another (majority) part of Iraqi society?
By definition that is civil war, and there’s nothing new about it. As I noted here in November 2004: “People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side” — the Sunni insurgency — “is fighting it.”
Indeed, until very recently that has been the case: ex-Baathist insurgents (aided by the foreign jihadists) fighting on one side, with the United States fighting back in defense of a new Iraq dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
Now all of a sudden everyone is shocked, shocked to find Iraqis going after Iraqis. But is it not our entire counterinsurgency strategy to get Iraqis who believe in the new Iraq to fight Iraqis who want to restore Baathism or impose Taliban-like rule? Does not everyone who wishes us well support the strategy of standing up the Iraqis so we can stand down? And does that not mean getting the Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves?
Hence the gradual transfer of war-making responsibility. Hence the decline of American casualties. Hence the rise of Iraqi casualties.
If surgeons wielded scalpels as carelessly as to day’s journalists misuse language, the mortality rate in our hospitals would soar. The latest example of this deadly abuse of terminology was the media’s declaration of “civil war” in Iraq.It was the equivalent of describing vandalism as genocide. The blaze faded, only to be reignited briefly by former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s statement last weekend that Iraq was in a civil war – a claim he swiftly retracted, to the disappointment of anchormen and -women everywhere.
Where’s the media, asks Daniel Henninger?
…[T]he status of Iraq’s government should be news. In last Thursday’s Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius, writing from Baghdad, described in detail “unmistakable signs here this week that Iraq’s political leaders are taking the first tentative steps toward forming a broad government of national unity that could reverse the country’s downward slide.” The column described intense negotiations following the February Samarra mosque bombing to form a national security commission acceptable to all political parties. A search of the Dow Jones-Reuters Factiva database for other accounts of these negotiations turned up only one story, a good one days later by Edward Wong of the New York Times, albeit on the bottom of page A10.
The tendentious editorial decision to paint the high-traffic front pages red with blood and demote the hard slog of political progress in Iraq to the unread inside has an effect. Any normal person would be depressed by constant face-time with stories of barbaric slaughter. If what amounts to a kind of contemporary brain-washing of both the American public and Washington elites causes them to falter and Iraq to “fail,” no future president of either party is again likely to deploy U.S. military resources in any sustained, significant way. You can’t imagine what “lose” will mean then.
The public’s pessimism is at least understandable. Less defensible is that of Washington’s exit-seeking elites. A bracing reality check for these folks has just been written by Frederick W. Kagan, a military specialist with the American Enterprise Institute. Hardly a flack for the White House, Mr. Kagan argues persuasively in “Myths of the Current War” (find under the Scholars listing at aei.org) that all the woulda, coulda, shoulda about going into Iraq and now getting out fast is simply irrelevant. “It does not matter now why we went into Iraq,” Mr. Kagan writes, “only what will happen if we do not succeed there.”
TGIF, says Mark of Decision ’08…enjoy your Friday…
UPDATE 8:45 a.m.: AJ has more on the media imbalance…
Four post titles in a row with an exclamation point! And now a question mark?
But seriously, Ralph Peters is right in that the media grabs onto a catchphrase for the week (“Iraq civil war”) and grinds it out regardless of the literal or figurative definition. Journalists are supposed to be good with language but, unfortunately, most of them went to journalism school.
While I agree with Krauthammer’s conclusions, I take issue with the idea that Iraq is, of course, in a civil war. He relies on a strict definition of the term, civil war, and ignores the connotation that many people assign to that phrase. I suppose the classification of civil war is a matter of degree and somewhat subjective, and I understand he does this to refute the notion that Iraq is “suddenly” found to be in a civil war and, therefore, degenerating. Still, what is going on in Iraq is not what most people would call a civil war.
How about: War of Baathist Aggression? Nah, that doesn’t fit either.
Jeez, Eric, I didn’t even notice…I was a little excitable yesterday, I guess…
TGIF Mark. I think Krauthammer is exaggerating a bit. A true civil war has areas under control of both sides with governments, etc. The insurgents are barely 50% Iraqi for Pete’s sake! (had to add my own exclamation).
Cheers, AJstrata