Question of the Day

If you define a civil war as "any significant level of violence where at least some of the violence is aimed at wresting control of a country from its government" then I suppose it is.

Myself, I think that's an overbroad definition of a civil war. I think it makes a number of situations in other countries become "civil wars" when previously nobody would have considered them as such. And given that a lot of the violence in Iraq is sectarian or terrorist in nature, I don't think it's a very helpful term to use to describe the situation.

But there clearly are some groups fighting for power. What percentage of the violence is with power in mind? I don't know.. anyone care to guess? My gut feeling is it's not the majority by a long shot.

Agreed Nicholas. To call Iraq a civil war is a huge stretch. It just comes off as panicy liberals with no knowledge of warfare trying to make Iraq look like a failure.

Is what the IRA did in Northern Ireland a civil war? The parallel seems worth looking at.

Certainly the Iraqi government needs to assert more control over Baghdad and the Sunni areas. And get rid of a certain Shiite militia leader, too.

But too many parts of Iraq are relatively at peace for this to be a civil war.

An additional thought: compare and contrast to the situation in Sri Lanka.

There is also a low-level multi-decade conflict there which has claimed many lives. However, (a) there is a primary anti-government organization which is responsible for most of the violence, and (b) its goals are mostly political. I'm not an expert on Sri Lanka but there doesn't seem to be much of a religious divide like there is in Iraq, and there are also no real reasons for the Tamil Tigers to commit acts of terrorism for worldwide media coverage, other than simply to bring attention to their existence.

I think it's an interesting parallel.. anyone else have additional thoughts?

Oh I forgot to add, the Sri Lanka/Tamil Tigers war seems to be generally described as a civil war. But as I pointed out, I think the reasons why that is valid to not *necessarily* apply to Iraq.

Does it really matter? The fact you are raising the question just may be your own answer. The Iraqi people need to tell us what they want. But if they are not interested in building a democracy, then this becomes a military decision. By this, I mean the actual "boots on the ground". If the civilian leadership of the military and this government think this is so important then, they themselves should put themselves or their own families in the "line of fire". We need to remember, this region has been fighting since the beginning of time and they will fight until the end of time.

Grumpy

If it is not already in a civil war, perhaps it should. Sure it will be slightly bloodier, but probably not by much. When one side cannot accept peace, it must be made to accept defeat. This extend to both the Sunni insurgents and the Sadr militia. Peace can only exists with willing participants. Then the Iraqi can get back to rebuilding their country.

It's not a civil war - it is revenge killing by ignorant religious fanatics, fueled by terrorists supported by Iran. Al Sadr should have been taken out with a missle a long, long time ago and another line drawn in the sand with Iran. It is in Iran's interest to keep the blood flowing. We all know it and we all know reconstruction dollars will keep flowing as long as the blood flows too.

*sigh* as usual someone (Grumpy) can't manage to write two sentences without dusting off the Chickenhawk fallacy.

I agree that Sadr is enough of a destabilising influence that he should probably just be eliminated for the greater good of the country.

Not a civil war yet. Although AQ, Iran, and the MSM are trying their best to make it one.

It is time to do something about Al Sadr/Iran. It seems like maybe we are waiting for the Iraqi army to be up to the task, but if they are not ready yet we need to do it ourselves. This might actually help prevent a civil war if we do it as a third party heading off a round of internal retaliation/fueds.

What difference does it make? What if we called the situation there a banana?

it is an exaggeration to call it a civil war. i think your post below sums that up best, john

Thanks to rightwingofascists, Iraq is worse than it was before Saddam Hussein. I hope the oil was worth it sure bushcheneyrumsfeld will be high on the hog after they impeached with big oil money.

Wow .. a whole 12 comments before a troll sniffed out this thread ...

It's not a civil war. As was stated there is no declared group fighting to depose the government. Many of the smaller groups doing the fighting might wish to take over, but beside Sunni killing Shia and vice versa, much of the violence is crimminal. Gang warfare might be a better definiition.

There weren't any revenge attacks today for yesterdays sniper attacks on the Shiite procession.

If there was a Civil War, it is over. The Question is a moot point.

And what if there is a civil war? At one time the people of Iraq were too afraid to fight anyone. Now they have the freedom to voice their disagreements.

Will these voiced disagreements result in bloodshed? Undoubtedly. But Iraq will not be forgotten about by the world community. America and the coalition are still there to help and so is the UN (like it or not).

It is in no one's interest to allow the situation in Iraq to continue to degenerate and eventually implode. People, organizations, and countries are going to put forth the effort to make sure are past efforts don't go in vain.

At one time in Iraq, dissent was answered by death for the dissenter and his family. Now people have the freedom to voice their opinions. The people of Iraq are going to figure things out, but there is a lot of healing that needs to take place. It's going to be a long process and it's going to hurt a lot for a while.

Don't forget some of those fighting are neither Shiite nor Sunni nor even Iraqis, but are actually agents of Al Qaeda, Iran, Syria or other outside factions wanting to keep Iraq off balance.

Yes, it is a civil war. And America does not have a dog in that fight, so let's get out.

I don't think it is civil war. I think the primary problem is corruption. Iraqis lived under a corrupt regime with Saddam and all previous forms of government in the area.

I see the shootings as a combination of criminal, terrorism, tribal infighting, revenge, and former bathist's trying to regain power.

Iraqi society needs to overcome corruption and develop trust for their own government, military, and police entities.

The American plan is working, but it will take time to succeed. Success now depends on Iraqi belief in their new government and country and ownership of the system we helped put in place.

Despite western media reports and American political nonsense, many indicators are positive. Time will tell.

Doug Santo
Pasadena, CA

Whether Iraq is involved in a civil war depends on how you define civil war (as several people already mentioned). If a civil war is defined as "armed conflict between factions or regions of the same country" then yes. Its not a classical civil war with rival groups fielding armies, nor have we seen the creation of a rival or alternative to the central Iraqi government, so in some ways its not a civil war (by the traditional definition). But at this point we're at Clintonian levels of debating verbage. If its not civil war but only wide-spread, destablizing, economy-killing, sectarian-based, mass killings is it some how better?

As long as the US maintains troops in the conflict, there will be no traditional civil war because any troop concentrations will be obliterated. But you have a 3+ way cluster f&*k between the Sunni insurgents, the Shia militias and the government, and the weakest (operationally) is the legitimate government. Like Lebanon, Iraq has not only lost the necessary state monopoly on force but has lost domestic superiority on hard power. Unlike Lebanon, the domestic militias are openly and actively hostile to the central government. Additionally, the government is loosing the nominal loyalty of its citizens. More Iraqis are considering themselves Sunni/Shia/Kurd than are considering themselves Iraqi. Few of these are true believers, most just don't want to get blown-up because of their religion but the end result is the same. You can't have an Iraqi state without Iraqis, and Iraqis are a vanishing breed.

So no, there are no rebel armies nor is there a rebel government. And yes, the Iraqi government can still achieve local superiority over any given local through military means (with massive American assistance). And yes, much of the violence is at least supplied if not actually performed by foreign powers (Iran, Syria, Saudis, Jordanians). But at the end of the day, you have a national government that has either lost control over or only exercises authority with the permission of the local power in every major city in the country. You have several armed factions that operate effectively at will, waging a very effective urban-guerilla war (which always includes acts that meet even the most permissive definition of terrorism) and deny the government the ability to successfully rebuild a functioning, modern economy/society. And you have a prolonged, violent conflict which is now killing tens of thousands directly each month, and causing what would be called ethnic cleansing anywhere but the Middle East (where we are always told things are more nuanced and these people are justing looking for people like them). It may not be a civil war, but if its not we need to make a name for it because we're going to see more and more of these and we need stop pretending that a civil war is somehow preferable to these general dis-solution conflicts.

I should preface this bit with the caveat that 1) I supported the initial invasion of Iraq (based on humanitarian/political reasons, not WMD) and 2) if I knew then what I know now I would still support the invasion but with tactical changes. In hindsight, de-Bathification was probably a mistake, the militias should have been suppressed early and hard, and the borders should have been tightly sealed for at least 6 months (longer if necessary). But I still feel that the establishment of a secular, multi-denominational Arab democracy was the best hope of stabilizing the Middle East and avoiding the much anticipated Islam vs Everyone global throw down that everyone’s waiting for. That being said, we really need to get past the partisan deadlocks people are holding.

Iraq is, to put it mildly, a train wreck. We have all witnessed the proof of the old adage that it’s easier to destroy than create, as the insurgents have successfully stymied most of our efforts to build a functional society. We build a school, they blow up the school or just shoot the kids. We pour millions into elections, they kill the elected official and his replacement. We send in experts to establish a state of the art national communications system, they sabotage the system and kill the contractors. The government is effectively isolated in the green zone, while it has surrendered whole portions of the city to rival militias.

Some people like the poster above Doug Santo argue that the American plan is working and that all we need is the Iraqis to believe in their government. The sad truth is that the US plan is not working. Only the most blindly optimistic would claim that the US could create a completely functioning state in three years, but some progress should have been made by this point and instead we are effectively back where we started. We have milestones that we’re supposed to bring peace (turnover of sovereignty, elections, ratification of a constitution, the death of Zarqawi). Each has led to a temporary reduction in violence then a resumption and recently an increase. Doug is correct regarding the ultimate measure of success (Iraqi support), unfortunately in every way that matters we have failed to win the Iraqi support. There are no real positive indicators, most of those held up as positives are either neutral or actually mask very dire indicators. One of the most common positive indicators held up is the peaceful status of the majority of Iraq’s provinces. In reality, this is not a good sign as several of those provinces are essentially empty desert (example: Ninawa – holding it means nothing), or they are already held by one sectarian group or another (Darhuk and Nabril – Kurds; Maysan and Al-Basra – Shia).

And the poster Preacher comments that things aren’t as bad as they were because at least now the Iraqis are fighting for what they believe in. He comments that eventually the violence will sort itself out and a resolution will be reached, followed by reconciliation and peace. If anyone but the Islamists were fighting, he’d be right. But time and time again, we’ve seen the Islamists aren’t looking for peace or normalization. They want/need the conflict because it’s the only thing they have to offer. Somalia, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Afganistan, the Waziristan region of Pakistan, in all of these the Islamists have maintained indefinite conflict to keep their control. Even Iran has used the specter of conflict (conflict with Israel, conflict with the US) to deflect domestic discontent and to mask the governments shortcomings. Iraq is not going to burn itself out anytime soon and now that everyone is pretty much committed to the conflict, the likelihood of a charismatic domestic unifier emerging are slim to none.

At least two posters (Nicholas and Saw1) advocate killing Sadr The problem with that is it’s a day late and a dollar short. Sadr has already successfully stood up to the US, killing him now would just make him a martyr. The time to take him out was when he first resisted, suppressing him and his movement now would require more casualties than we are willing to inflict (try wrapping your head around that logic loop-we’re waging a war where we can’t kill too many). Additionally, he is only the most famous, there are so many different Shia militias that taking them out can not be done without a major campaign. Which we can’t do as long as we labor under the delusion that everything is under control, because stable governments don’t send armor column into their own city centers.

In my obviously humble opinion, what we’re seeing right now is the end of the beginning of the biggest development in the Middle East since the Iranian Revolution, possibly since the creation of Israel: the dissolution of Iraq and the establishment of three separate partisan states. We are trying to hold together a state that no one wants; but one that everyone fears the alternative to. Hardly anyone in Iraq wants Iraq as it is now, they want a Kurdish dominated Iraq or a Shia dominated Iraq, or a Sunni dominated Iraq, a whatever-they-are dominated Iraq. That’s not going to happen, because no one in the region will allow. The Saudis/Jordanians won’t allow a Shia Iraq, Turkey won’t allow a Kurdish Iraq, and the Iranians won’t allow a Sunni Iraq. So each will continue funding their respective proxies until they’ve either exterminated everyone else, or created a defacto one-party state (example: Al-Anbar, Al-Basra, Darhuk). To an extent, this has already started with the Shia south and the Kurdish north. The point of conflict is where are the borders going to lie, will the Sunnis hold on to any major cities, and will the neighbors allow these ethnic enclaves to exist. Turkey is incredibly unlikely to allow a Kurdistan. Can a Shia south defend itself against a hostile Arabian peninsula and avoid being swallowed by fellow-Shia, but ethnically Persian Iran? And can a Sunni west survive alone or will it be absorbed by Jordan (best case) or Saudi Arabia (worst case). Welcome to the funeral of Iraqi territorial integrity.

Murdoc the Chickenhawk (that's "Mr. Chickenhawk" to you!) checking in:

It's a civil war and has been for quite some time. But a low-intensity, guerrilla-type civil war.

The bad guys have taken the fight to the Iraqi military and police, and they're backed and supported in the field by irregular paramilitary forces and terrorists.

A lot of the civilian-on-civilian bloodshed might not really count as a "civil war", but just because there is civil strife, gang warfare, and terrorism doesn't mean that a war isn't being fought. Just because one side has no chance of winning doesn't mean that they aren't fighting.

As long as US troops are there, no one will back the insurgents enough to make it the "civil war" that critics are hoping for, but I fear that trying too hard to pretend that there isn't a civil war of any kind taking place will hurt our chances to stabilize things.

And, no, I'm not a Chicken Little Hawk crying that the sky is falling.

We just need to own up to the fact that this is a lot more than gangs and angry neighbors.