Civil War? Perhaps not so civil.

An article in today's NY Times describes the change in Iraq from a war of insurgency to a civil war along sectarian lines. Iraq is quickly morphing into Lebanon or Bosnia -- a place where neighbors kill neighbors -- where tribal loyalty is the only law, and self-defense and revenge have become the priorities in the community.

We should be proud of the transformation we have wrought. This is so much better than Saddam's Iraq.

An excerpt from the article:

The new pattern..., has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs,
moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic
lines — an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid
over the past three years.

The nature of the Iraq war has been changing since at least the late autumn, when political friction between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs rose even as American troops began implementing a long-term plan to decrease their street presence. But the killing accelerated after the bombing on Feb. 22 of a revered Shiite shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting.

About 900 Iraqi civilians died violently in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to military statistics and the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths. Meanwhile, at least 29 American troops were killed in March, the second-lowest monthly total since the war began.

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