The fire this time

Juan Cole's article of this week on Iraq, Civil war? What civil war? Salon 03/23/06, is very informative on a number of points. He walks through a political-science definition of civil war to illustrate that its the right term for what's going on in Iraq. And he makes this point about the Republican whiners who complain that the evil Liberal Press isn't telling the "good news":

The Iraqi central government is pitted against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance. Some 50 distinct cells, spanning the political spectrum from secular Arab nationalists to religious fundamentalists, direct the activities of at least 20,000 to 30,000 part-time guerrillas, and perhaps many more. They strike regularly throughout seven key center-north provinces, including Baghdad, which at 6 million persons contains a fourth of the inhabitants of Iraq. In civil wars, the violence is staccato and almost random. Journalists or bloggers who visit Iraq and find bustling bazaars and brisk traffic are often fooled by their naiveté into thinking that the violence has been exaggerated. But it should be remembered that boys went swimming and fished not far from where the battle of Gettysburg was being fought in the U.S. Civil War. Guerrilla violence does not need to be omnipresent to effectively disrupt the society. (my emphasis)

The Bush administration, with our infallible generals as their willing partners, have screwed things up in Iraq so badly that this is where we are:

Bush will continue to mouth his optimistic slogans - he has no choice. But he is now at the mercy of events. A catastrophic, or even significant, downturn in Iraq may strip the last shreds of public support for Bush's ill-fated war, and send his presidency into a downward spiral from which, like the tragedy in Iraq, there may be no escape.

The question is not whether Iraq is in a civil war. It is. The worry now is whether the civil war can remain contained in Iraq, or instead spills over into regional war.

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