The Redhunter

There's been a lot of talk about whether Iraq is in a state of civil war or not. NBC News said that after "careful consideration" it has decided that it would now use the term "civil war" to label what was going on over there. In fact, as you shall see if you keep reading, the liberals in the media plan on using the term "civil war" as a reason for us to pull out of Iraq regardless-of-consequences.

StrategyPage has another view, one that I think is really more accurate. In a piece called "The Final Solution", and published almost a week before NBC's announcement, they say that

Most of the Iraqi troops are Shia Arab, and they talk openly fighting for a "Sunni Arab Free" Iraq. Shades of the "Final Solution." While the faint hearted Sunni Arabs continue to flee across the border, or to the few Sunni Arab areas in Iraq that do not host Sunni Arab terrorist groups, many Iraqi Sunni Arabs have vowed to fight to the end. This is a major issue in the Arab world, where the struggle between the Sunni and Shia branches has long been fought without much violence. But in Iraq, this thousand year old feud is very real, very deadly, and being closely watched by Iraq's neighbors.

Ethnic cleansing has been a StrategyPage theme for several months now, and indeed it seems that is what is happening. James Robbins points out that most people think of a civil war as a situaion in which there are rival governments,, and concludes that

...this is not merely a civil war; it is an international conflict with significant regional impact. Reducing the conflict in Iraq to a civil war does not clarify our options. Maybe the people who are so committed to the expression can explain what difference it makes in policy terms, that is if this is anything more than a semantic game. If it is a civil war, what then? How does that affect our over all strategy? What changes need to be made? How can we win it? Unless this word play leads to concrete policy recommendations, it is a great waste of time.

The anti-war people are telling us that we have to get out of Iraq because it's in a civil war and we cannot stop civil wars. Or that it's not worth the price. Something along these lines.

But aren't these mostly the same folks who told us that we had to get into Kosovo/Bosnia because they were in a civil war and we had to stop it? And aren't they mostly the same people who go around saying "never again" with regard to Rwanda, where the fighting between the Tutsi's and Hutu's was a civil war if there ever was one?

Now, I think that President Clinton was right to stop the bloodshed in Kosovo and Bosnia. It became apparent that the Europeans couldn't put out a fire in their own backyard, and that the UN was as usual useless, so he did what he had to do. Good for him. I don't blame Clinton for not acting on Rwanda, as it was a situation that the UN was supposed to have been controlling, and it's easy to moralize after the fact.

No, what bugs me is these people who are using the term "civil war" as a political weapon.

So if the whole "civil war" business isn't about the reality on the ground, what is it about? In his Media Blog, Stephen Spruiell has it about right, I think:

Let's cut right to what this "civil war" fanfare in the media is really all about: It has nothing to do with the ongoing violence in Iraq, and everything to do with the fact that these media organizations, which are struggling to maintain their relevance in a rapidly changing industry, feel the need to assert themselves and remind the public of their importance, and what better way than by calling the war for the insurgents and starting a push to solidify public opinion in favor of immediate withdrawal?

Spruiell links to another post at NewsBusters where they post the "screen cap" from the NBC story, which says "Civil War: How Can the U.S. Get Out of Iraq?"

Get it? This is going to be the new theme of the anti-war crowd, that because Iraq is in a civil war we have to get out. Look for more of this to come.

As usual, some of the berst analysis is over at Belmont Club. Check out Wretchard's latest. Here are some of the most important parts:

The first and fatal miscalculation by the Sunnis was to think they could drive the US Armed Forces from Iraq, a gamble which they lost. Encouraged by the absence of a crushing campaign in northern Iraq, itself possibly caused by the absence of the 4ID from the OIF order of battle, and alienated by the American decision to "de-Baathize" Iraq, many former military Sunnis chose to continue resistance using guerilla tactics. ...

The Sunni insurgency compounded its military failures by ruthlessly suppressing any attempts by their ethnic leaders to participate in political process sponsored by the Coalition and by murdering any Sunni who came forward to join the new Army and Police. The result was that Sunnis were underrepresented in both the Constitutional convention and in the elections of 2005. It was a double-whammy. Not only were Sunni military resources depleted, but they self-selected themselves out of the American sponsored Iraqi government.
...

Westhawk observes that American officers believe that "Iraq’s Sunni Arabs will continue to fight because they believe they face either extermination or banishment if they do not." With the Sunni military struggle essentially hopeless, efforts to redress the balance within the Iraqi political process arrived too late. The door had been barred by Shi'ite extremism fueled by Moqtada al-Sadr and separately, the agents of Iran. In a remarkable display of nonstatesmanship, the Shi'ite parties headed by Iraqi PM Maliki and goaded by al-Sadr proved less interested in building an Iraq than upon obtaining revenge upon their former masters.

I suppose one can say that it's a civil war in the sense that you have two camps, Sunni and Shia, who are fighting each other. Each has a militia and/or terrorist/death squads. Unfortunately the debate is marred by bad faith on the part of some in the anti-war camp, such as NBC News, who are using the issue to advance their political agenda.

But either way, I'm not sure what difference it makes. If we went into Kosovo/Bosnia to stop a civil war, and are supposed to regret that we didn't go into Rwanda, shouldn't we stay to stop the violence in Iraq?