The Republican Party way of war

Gareth Porter has an interesting take on why the Bush administration is insisting that there is no civil war in Iraq, when virtually all military and political analysts outside the government are calling it at least a low-level civil war. Even a genuine expert on Iraq like Juan Cole, who has been reluctant to use the term civil war up until a couple of weeks ago, is saying things like, "I would say that a communal attack of this scale is symptomatic of civil war" (Re: a mass killing of 25).

Porter argues in U.S. Officials Downplay Civil War Threat Inter Press Service 03/06/06 that, apart from its usual happy-face spin, the Bush administration doesn't want to admit there's a civil war under way because it's one more thing they haven't prepared for:

The administration was particularly anxious to deny the approaching sectarian civil war because of the potentially troublesome fact that preventing such a war has not been its primary concern. Rather, Washington has continued to give top priority to its programme of turning the war against Sunni insurgents over to primarily Shiite military units that nurse violent grudges against the Sunni population. ...

Sunni-Shiite tensions are inevitably heightened by both paramilitary operations by Shiite units in Sunni areas, which provide cover for anti-Sunni death squads. Negotiation of a general ceasefire involving Sunni insurgents, government security forces and occupation troops would provide a better atmosphere for negotiations on political issues.

I try not to drag the "V" word (Vietnam) into these Iraq War posts too much.

But part of what produced this is that the Army is trying to do in Iraq what they did with the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) during the Vietnam War: train them to fight a conventional war American-style, i.e., heavy on firepower and high-tech devices. But when it comes to training, they have to work with what they have in terms of Iraqi counterparts. And their counterparts are the ones provided to them by Shi'a dominated-government.

Of course, if Rummy's man Jerry Bremer hadn't just dissolved the Iraqi Army, they might have more than Shi'a partisan militias to work with today.

And it doesn't help that right now the Sunni parties fighting the government sound more open to have American troops stay for a while than our allies in the Shi'a government do.

The Bush administration invaded the Iraq of their dreams. Now their fighting the Iraq War of their dreams. If only that annoying "reality" thing didn't keep intruding itself!

The Republican Party way of war: nothing quite like it.

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