So if you haven’t heard already, NBC has made an editorial decision to start calling the situation in Iraq a ‘civil war’.
On this question of when we start calling the violence in Iraq a ‘civil war’, the White House and the Pentagon have clearly been holding out for an organized, conventional civil war, with at least semi-organized armies, perhaps even contending governments.
Such a conflict might be broadly similar to civil wars in the United States, Vietnam, Spain and innumerable other countries. Or, given the overlapping ethnic geography of Iraq, it might look most like Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
With the back and forth atrocities over the last week we may be on the cusp of that. But what we seem to moving toward — and perhaps have already been in for weeks or months — is arguably worse than civil war, by this definition. And that’s what strikes me as the shortcoming of the debate over this phrase. Civil war, by most definitions at least, involves some broad level of organization. What we have here is a situation where there is a nominal government (which none of the contending parties seems particularly interested in overthrowing) but in which the country has experienced a complete breakdown of law and order. It’s not so much civil war as a descent into anarchy.
Late Update: Out of curiosity I looked up Merriam-Webster’s definition of ‘civil war’, in the unabridged version, and it has the rather brief and unhelpful “a war between different sections or parties of the same country or nation.”
A Katherine Harris comeback? That’s what she seems to be plotting.
Paul Kiel is going to be bringing us an update later on the battle brewing in Florida 13th district — that’s the Jennings-Buchanan race. But, looking for a silver lining in this election day travesty, it seems to me that we can be happy that there is at last a clear-cut case — at least as clear-cut as we’re likely ever going to get — where electronic voting machines delivered the race to the candidate who didn’t get the most votes. I’m not saying it’s the first time it’s happened. But it does seem like the first time where the available facts leave no real room for reasonable doubt. The electronic voting machines — through error or malfeasance, though there seems to be no suggestion of the latter in this case — gave the election to the Republican candidate, Buchanan, whereas the voters gave it to the Democrat, Jennings. And because of how they work there’s no way to do the kind of ‘recount’ one does with old-fashioned paper-record ballots.
So the issue is out there, clear and stark. Now we decide whether we care enough to do anything about it.
Who’ll end Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-LA) political career? The voters of New Orleans or the Justice Department?
We’ll find out in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, the number of corruption allegations continues to grow.
TPM Reader GF on the ‘civil war’ question …
Isn’t what you’re describing commonly referred to as a “failed state?”
I recall someone saying a “failed state” outcome is far worse than a civil war. I’m afraid that’s exactly what we’re seeing now, though.
I think this is right. This is more like Somalia or perhaps the Balkans. But my point here is not to divert us from the pressing question of what to do with a debate over semantics. What I’m saying is that, at this point, a real ‘civil war’ would almost be preferable.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), out of office, but still available for kicking around.
A dissent from TPM Reader BL …
You write,
“What we have here is a situation where there is a nominal government (which none of the contending parties seems particularly interested in overthrowing) . . . ”
This is not correct. The Sunni Arab sectarian resistance — the movement commonly referred to as “the insurgency,” which has been responsible for most attacks on U.S. forces and which the U.S. is today fighting in Anbar and elsewhere, does not accept the legitimacy of the current government and is indeed particularly interested in overthrowing it.
Other factions have substantial representation within the current government, but they differ as to the ultimate shape the Iraqi constitutional order should take, and find the current feckless government to be convenient because it means that they can rule local areas as warlords, without interference from the useless Iraqi state. If the Iraqi government ever becomes a problem for them, they will stop tolerating it.
That’s why, of course, Maliki can’t really do anything to “disarm the militias.”
This is a good rejoinder to what I wrote. I guess I would only say that this strikes me as the eventual but not necessarily the proximate goal of the Sunni insurgency. My sense is that they’re trying to make the country ungovernable and trying to get us out. Presumably, in their thinking, the fall of the current government follows on either or both of those goals being achieved.
State Department asks Bush twins to withdraw from Argentina. Twins opt to stay the course.