Uncivil Civil War Talk

Charles Krauthammer, who at the time of this writing looks astonishingly like George Will in his memeorandum thumbnail, notes a lot of frenetic debating about whether there's a civil war in Iraq. The debaters are all people with vested interests and axes a-grinding, so where's the clarity?

CS-M has been involved in the debate, taking the side that the limited, regionalized fighting that's going on there doesn't constitute a civil war, as much as MSM would like to have a new, nastier war to cover there, especially one that would be particularly embarassing and problematic for the president.

Krauthammer takes another view: Of course it's a civil war. And he's been saying it since 2004:

"People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side" -- the Sunni insurgency -- "is fighting it."

Recently, that's changed to Shi'ia on Sunni and vice versa, and this increase in Iraqi-on-Iraqi fighting is, he says, the necessary results of our exit strategy -- you know, the exit strategy the Dems keep saying we don't have? Yeah, that one.

Now all of a sudden everyone is shocked to find Iraqis going after Iraqis. But is it not our entire counterinsurgency strategy to get Iraqis who believe in the new Iraq to fight Iraqis who want to restore Baathism or impose Taliban-like rule? Does not everyone who wishes us well support the strategy of standing up the Iraqis so we can stand down? And does that not mean getting the Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves?

Hence the gradual transfer of war-making responsibility. Hence the decline of American casualties. Hence the rise of Iraqi casualties.

Good point, although the fighting in Iraq pales in comparison to "real" recent civil wars, like Bosnia and Rawanda. But Krauthammer's argument is effective in stopping the exploitative civil war talk the Dem/MSM axis is using to attempt to drive us out of Iraq.

Tags: Iraq, Civil war, Krauthammer