Is It Okay To Call This Thing A Civil War Yet?
February 27, 2006 (3 Responses)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Violence killed at least 29 people Sunday, including three American soldiers, and mortar fire rumbled through the heart of Baghdad after sundown despite stringent security measures imposed after an explosion of sectarian violence.
(snip)
The vehicle ban, which followed a curfew that kept everyone in the Baghdad region inside for two days, was part of emergency measures imposed after Wednesday’s bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra triggered a wave of reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war. (Emphasis mine)
How many people have to die for this violence to be officially labelled for what it is, i.e., a CIVIL WAR? What “brink” needs to be crossed? We have one large portion of the Iraqi populace, the Shi’ites, engaged in mortal combat with another large portion of the Iraqi populace, the Sunnis. Thousands have already died because of this intranational conflict. Sounds like a civil war to me. Because there are no real fronts of which to speak or lines on a map moving from side to side, does it NOT make it war?
The world press seems to be following the American media’s narrative on this story, who in turn are having it spoon-fed to them by the White House. It’s still an insurgency, being orchestrated by terrorists and dead-enders. It’s not an armed grassroots conflict between two groups who have centuries of bad blood between them. Heavens no! That would be a civil war, which would mean King George and his ministers fucked up even worse than previously thought, thereby fucking up a country and destabilizing an entire fucking region because of a fucked plan to further American fucking hegemony and to keep gas flowing into our fucking gas-guzzling suburban tanks. To suggest that this whole thing is a collosal fuck-up gives comfort to our enemies, therefore making you a traitor. And who wants to be labelled a traitor? Not me!
God save the King!
I haven’t actually heard him referred to as ‘King George’ before…weird that. Still – the collapse of all law and order in Iraq was predictable. It has been clear for some time that the UK and US forces in Iraq don’t have a clean or acceptable exit strategy, so in the ensuing confusion after Saddam was toppled, history will recall how sectarian sides rushed in to fill the vacuum and further their causes. I don’t know if this is a civil war or not yet, or at what point it becomes one; perhaps someone of a more historical or military persuasion can inform us on that one.
I do know however that this is another tragedy; growing worse by the day. I wonder how history will record these last few years. I wonder what school children in 50 years time will be taught about the events that bring us to this point in our time. I wonder how it will be ‘revised’ to suit future politically correct constraints.
Well FUCK! I suspect the White House is holding off on calling it Civil War to give Linguist-in-Chief Rumsfeld time to come up with a suitably Orwellian moniker. Perhaps, “Tightly Controlled Minor Conflct in the Service of Wider Middle Eastern Democracy” would fit the bill…and if he uses it, I want a cut of the royalties.
“I haven’t actually heard him referred to as ‘King George’ before…weird that.”
Coyote,
King George was the one who went mad. ‘Nuff said?