Civil war in Iraq - trying to find the right name for an impossible nightmare

froomkin...

"'It's stunning; it should have been called a civil war a long time ago, but now I don't see how people can avoid calling it a civil war,' said Nicholas Sambanis, a political scientist at Yale who co-edited 'Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis,' published by the World Bank in 2005. 'The level of violence is so extreme that it far surpasses most civil wars since 1945.' . . .

"On Friday, Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, insisted that the Iraq conflict was not civil war, noting that Iraq's top leaders had agreed with that assessment. Last month, Tony Snow, the chief spokesman for President Bush, acknowledged that there were many groups trying to undermine the government, but said that there was no civil war because 'it's not clear that they are operating as a unified force. You don't have a clearly identifiable leader.'"

Harvard professor Monica Toft wrote on NiemanWatchdog.org in July that there are six criteria for considering a conflict a civil war -- and that Iraq had met all six since early 2004.

personally, i find the discussion about civil war or no civil war akin to the discussions i was party to as a small child attending catholic catechism classes, where we would actually spend time debating questions like, "how many angels can fit on the end of a pin..." there are a lot of people dying, disappearing, being horribly wounded, losing loved ones, enduring unimaginable pain... call it a civil war... call it a banana... it's hell... it's wrong... it shouldn't be happening... and it's our fault...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet