Civil War

If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. – Former Iraq Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, in an interview on BBC Sunday AM, March 19, 2006

Stewart: But getting back to the civil war in …
Oliver: Uh buh buh buh buh buh – the ongoing scuffle between sectarian insurgent groups
Stewart: OK, but the that …
Oliver: Hold on hold on -- the internal sovereignty challenge, or, uh, the faith-based melee.
Stewart: Alright.
Oliver: That’s a nice one.
Stewart: But why can’t we just say and call it a civil war?
Oliver: Because to American ears the phrase civil war conjures horrible jaw-dropping images of bloodshed panned across slowly by Ken Burns.
…
Stewart: 3000 Iraqis died just, just this month, arguing over what to call it seems like semantic quibbling.
Oliver: Semantic quibbling? Well, I wouldn’t call it that.
Stewart: What, what would you call it?
Oliver: A minor linguistic flareup between two parties of differing terminological points of view.

-- Jon Stewart and John Oliver on the Daily Show, November 27, 2006

For months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into a civil war. And, for the most part, news organizations like NBC have hesitated to characterize it as such. But after careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted -- that the situation in Iraq with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas -- can now be characterized as a civil war. -- Matt Lauer on the Today Show, November 27, 2006 (reported at mediabistro.com)

With Matt Lauer’s certification of the conflict in Iraq as a civil war, there has been an outbreak of semantics, so let’s partake. First, some definitions from a 20 year old dictionary:

Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary

• civil war – War between factions or regions of a single nation.


• faction – A group of persons forming a cohesive, usu. contentious minority within a larger group.


• war – A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.

So, the requirements are:

• Open, armed conflict – With estimates from 10s of thousands to 100s of thousands of dead Iraqis, this condition is satisfied.


• Extra credit: Prolonged conflict – The US involvement in Iraq is now longer than it’s involvement in World War II, so the credit is granted.


• Factions – Besides the Sunni/Shi’a split and the infusion of Al Qaeda, there are a plethora of factions and militias to choose from in Iraq. The best known are the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr centered in the Sadr City district of Baghdad and the Badr Organization based in Karbala in southern Iraq.


• Single nation – That would be Iraq.

The definition of civil war would seem to be fully satisfied. Yet the Bush Administration disagrees. Perhaps Webster’s is oversimplifying. Let’s take a listen to Tony Snow.

Q: Tony, a couple of minutes ago, you said one of the goals in Iraq is to prevent civil war. Can you take a minute and give us the definition that the President is working with? Because he continues to say it's not at that state yet; lots of analysts do say it's at that state. What's the threshold that the administration is working with --

MR. SNOW: I think the general notion is a civil war is when you have people who use the American Civil War or other civil wars as an example, where people break up into clearly identifiable feuding sides clashing for supremacy within Iran.

-- from Press Briefing by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, October 20, 2006

Snow seems to be saying that a further condition is that the factions are “clearly identifiable”, and that the Iraqi factions are not. However, it is more likely that the factions are not clearly identifiable only to the Bush Administration. Unlike the very easy to identify sides in the American Civil War, the entire structure of Iraq is a byzantine composition of, in order from highest to lowest: federations, tribes, clans, houses and families. (See a description at Arab Tribes in Iraq.) While this structure may be fairly opaque to American eyes, it is more than likely that each of these groups can clearly identify their enemies.

In my Outcomes post, I used the phrase “sectarian conflict and civil war”. Sectarian conflict and civil war are not mutually exclusive – using the entire phrase is a way to describe the type of civil war that is occurring. The phrase “sectarian conflict” would not apply to the US Civil War, for instance, but would apply to Yugoslavia’s breakup. But again, the Bush Administration disagrees. Notice how, in this excerpted testimony from the August 3, 2006 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the term “sectarian violence” is used as condition that is mutually exclusive from “civil war”:

Gen. John ABIZAID, Commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM): As the primary security problem in Iraq has shifted from a Sunni insurgency to sectarian violence, Al Qaida terrorists, insurgents and Shia militants compete to plunge the country into civil war. ... Sen. Carl LEVIN (D., MI), Ranking Member: The British ambassador made the following assessment, according to USA Today: that the British ambassador to Iraq -- it's Mr. Patey, I believe, P-A-T-E-Y -- has warned that Iraq is descending toward civil war. And he said it's likely to split along ethnic lines. And he's reported as predicting that Iraq's security situation could remain volatile for the next 10 years. Do you agree, General, with the ambassador from Britain to Iraq that Iraq is sliding toward civil war? ABIZAID: I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war. ... Sen. John WARNER (R., VA), Committee Chairman: But now, in the words of General Abizaid, we're on the brink of a civil war. And I don't have the exact words before me, but I was struck by General Chiarelli's statement the other day that in his 35 years of military training, he really never had spent a day preparing for what faces him as our commander of forces in Iraq: sectarian violence, civil war. What is the mission of the United States today under this resolution if that situation erupts into a civil war? What are the missions of our forces? Gen. Peter PACE, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Sir, I believe that we do have the possibility of that devolving to a civil war, but that does not have to be a fact. ... ABIZAID: I think it will move toward this equilibrium in the next five years. That doesn't mean that we need to keep our force levels where they are, but I am confident that the Iraqi security forces, with good governance, coupled together, will bring the country toward equilibrium because the alternative is so stark. They've had the experience of Lebanon. All you gotta do is go ask the Lebanese how long a civil war will last, and you'll know that you must move toward equilibrium.

It would seem that the Bush Administration thinks there is some dividing line between sectarian conflict and civil war, that if the current horrendous, open, armed conflict that is called sectarian violence gets worse, then it transforms into something else called civil war at some point. While this may be true in a sense - there may be sectarian violence that is not civil war - it would be helpful if they could provide a more complete definition. Is it a difference in degree or a difference in kind? Perhaps, given Tony Snow’s description, they expect the factions to break out uniforms at some point, maybe something in a blue or gray. Luckily for us, Matt Lauer has resolved the controversy.

Turned Out / Turnout

Turned Out

Many conservatives are interpreting the mid-term election results as a punishment for abandoning conservatism. George Will, in his election post-mortem, states that Republicans are “guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently)”. The idea of limited government may be often stated as a conservative ideal, but it has seldom been followed in any administration since the New Deal. In particular, it was certainly not followed by that conservative deity Ronald Reagan, who merely ballooned the deficit with tax cuts while paying mere lip service to reducing the size of government. And nation-building was fully embraced by conservatives in Vietnam and to some extent (again, during Reagan’s administration) in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

But contrary to the protestations of old-line conservatives, there were only two main factors in the fall of the Republicans from power – Iraq and Katrina. While Katrina was seldom mentioned, and, it seems, is almost forgotten, it was the turning point in the public’s perception of the Bush Administration and it’s Republican enablers in the Congress. It emboldened the media, finally, to engage in full criticism of the government, and revealed to the American people the government’s outright incompetence. There was no filter available to the Bush Administration to obscure the results of their inaction, no ability to claim that dissent was unpatriotic as they had done with any critique of the Iraq War.

And this change in perception, in full circle from when President Bush stood on a pile of rubble in Manhattan after 9/11, carried over into the administration’s conduct of the Iraq War. Instead of the public continuing to give the government the benefit of the doubt, aided by the rampant spin of the conservative public relations machine, the debacle of Katrina has continued to color every statement uttered by the administration. In the “fog of war” it is difficult to prove incompetence – it is easy to point to a evil and clever enemy as the reason for any setbacks. But Katrina was the proof. And Iraq has become a dull pain in the American side, killing soldiers and draining the treasury with what seems to be no change for the better.

But if it were not for the current quagmire in Iraq and the devastation of Katrina, would the American public have noticed the “apostasy from conservative principles” that George Will describes? The same cronyism, the same profligate lobbyist-directed spending, the same hubris has infected the Bush Administration from the very beginning. The great nation-building exercise that is the Iraq War was well under way in 2004, yet George W. Bush was reelected. Abandoning conservative principles had nothing to do with the election results – this election was about competence, or the lack thereof.


Turnout

Depending on the source, percentage turnout for the 2006 mid-term elections was estimated at either the average since 1972 to the highest since 1982 – in both cases the percentage turnout is around 40%. One estimate has the Democratic share of the vote at 17.9%, with the Republican share at 16.8%. These numbers could be interpreted to mean that less than one-fifth of the voting age population have decided which party controls Congress, along with the fate of 36 Governorships.

The highest turnout occurred in Minnesota with more than 59%; the lowest was a close race between Mississippi and Louisiana, with between 26 and 28%. The turnout numbers seem to lack correlation with the closeness of the major races in the states. South Dakota had the second highest turnout at almost 58%, yet in the two statewide races, for Governor and the single House district, the margins were 26% and 40% respectively. Yet Maryland, with seemingly tight races for both US Senator and Governor (several late pre-election polls had both races within the margin of error), registered between 40-50%, depending on the estimate.

There’s been much gnashing of teeth from Joe Lieberman’s win over Ned Lamont in Connecticut. But here are the numbers:

• In the Democratic primary, Lamont won by 146,587 to 136,468 for Lieberman out of 696,823 registered Democratic voters. Although turnout increased to 40% from the average primary turnout of 25% (the Connecticut primary is held in August), Lamont was determined to be the Democratic candidate by only 21% of registered Democrats. His vote in the primary was 12% of the total votes cast in the general election, and 7% of the voting age population.


• In the general election, Lieberman won by 563,725 to 448,077 with a total vote of 1,131,692 from a voting age population of 2,086,609. Although Lieberman received 50% of the votes cast, he was elected by only 27% of the voting age population. Such are the vagaries of the American election system.

Sources

• United States Elections Project: 2006 Voting-Age and Voting-Eligible Population Estimates (Excel spreadsheet: Turnout 1980-2006.xls)


• Center for the Study of the American Electorate: Bush, Iraq Propel Modest Turnout Increase Ending 12-Year Republican Revolution: Dems Higher Than Gop For First Time Since 1990 (PDF)

Outcomes II

The primary error in judgment during the Vietnam War wasn't troop levels or strategy or operational tactics -- it was misinterpretation of the goals and aspirations of North Vietnam's political leadership. The West saw the North Vietnamese as proxies of the Communist Great Powers. It was assumed that the NVA and Viet Cong were wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Soviet Union and China, acting as forward divisions of an expansion through Southeast Asia, all in line with the Domino Theory. Surely, if Vienam fell into the Communist sphere, then all of Southeast Asia would follow.

What the West did not realize, or care to even investigate, was that the aspirations of the Vietnamese Communists were not related to the international Communist movement. They wanted control of their country, and to subjugate their own population economically and politically, but they were not interested in creating a broader sphere of influence in Southeast Asia for the Soviets and Chinese.

The Vietnam War was a true nationalist insurgency. It’s goal was to rid the country of invaders (the US and it's allies) and a corrupt (South Vietnamese) government. This is the reason it spread throughout the civilian population so thoroughly. Women and children strapping themselves with bombs to kill American soldiers is a sign of civilian support. When a movement is not deterred even when 3 million are killed, that signals that something other than a proxy war is taking place.

The question now is: Is Iraq another Vietnam? There are certainly similarities. Like Vietnam, the reasoning for intervention in Iraq was based on an abstract political theory, similar to the old Domino Theory -- but this time it is a democratic seed that would spread. There is the difficulty in separating combatants from civilians, with the resulting huge numbers of civilian casualties. There are even similarities at the tactical level, with what are essentially Vietnam-style search-and-destroy missions that are not designed to hold territory. And Iraq, like Vietnam, is a quagmire -- there is constant violence and loss of life without any sort of visible improvement.

But what of the differences? Vietnam did not threaten military or economic strategic interests of the West. It did not become a base of operations for attacks on the US and it's allies. Even though it became, and remains today, an extremely repressive government, Vietnam has not directly affected the West in any measurable way since the US left.

Now before the US invaded Iraq, a similar statement might have been made, that Saddam Hussein's regime had very little effect on the West. The Iraqis would occasionally shoot at US planes, and there was certainly evasion of sanctions, but Hussein was "in a box", to repeat Colin Powell's famous phrase, and he was staying there.

But with the invasion and the toppling of Saddam, the situation has changed. It is an irreversible process that has occurred. Take a piece of steel and heat it to a high temperature. If the steel is allowed to cool at a slow rate, it will return to it's original state. But if the steel is dipped in a cold water bath and cooled quickly, in a process known as "quenching", the steel will harden with the introduction of martensite -- it cannot return to it's original state. Like quenched steel, Iraq cannot return to it's original state. It is no longer ruled by a weakened dictator. Iraq now contains various factions which have at least the possibility of desiring to support direct terrorist action against the US. So the idea that removing US and British troops from Iraq will increase or maintain our safety is not necessarily correct.

Another huge difference between Iraq and Vietnam is that our opponent in Vietnam was a single entity -- there was no civil war after our exit. Whereas Iraq is experiencing conflict among at least three main ethnic groups with many more subgroups, factions and militias. Various outside entities have their hands in Iraq as well, including Iran, Syria and Al Qaeda, and there will be an additional problem with Turkey if the Kurds decide to become independent.

With all these groups involved, it is impossible to predict what the outcome in Iraq will be if US troops leave. Of course, the predictions of those who began this war were as far off as predictions can be. And, as discussed previously, an even worse error was the Bush Administration assuming that their sole prediction had a 100% probability, ignoring the lessons of Yugoslavia and post-World War II reconstruction among others.

So, given the recent history, every well-meaning rational individual who espouses total troop withdrawal must do the following:

• Delineate the potential outcomes resulting from withdrawal, i.e., US-friendly democracy, Iran-leaning theocracy, civil war leading to partition, terrorist haven, etc.


• Supply proof for each scenario by relating to a previous historical situation. E.g., post-Tito Yugoslavia is an excellent example of the "civil war leading to partition" outcome.


• Assign numbers for the increase or decrease in casualties and money spent that would result from each outcome, in both the short term and long term.


• Give probabilities for each outcome.


• Provide contingency plans for outcomes with negative impacts.

See, that's what the Bush Administration should have done in preparation for this war. But if the criticism is not enough planning, or unrealistic expectations, then the critics must provide what they think is missing. And we cannot simply return Iraq to some initial pre-invasion state – unfortunately the Bush Administration has already removed that option.

In Vietnam the US misunderstood our opponents’ intentions, and we paid for it with more than 58000 dead. Although we have paid for our foolish and irreversible adventure in Iraq with almost 3000 dead, we need to now be rational and coldly analytical about whatever future steps we will take there.

Transformation

It was a strange sight seeing President Bush at his press conference on Wednesday, chastened and defeated, confronted by a press that for one of the first times did not seem cowed. A certain lightness was in the air, even for the president himself.

In particular, with the official announcement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation (which was in actuality a firing), America entered an entirely new political climate, one where the commander-in-chief would actually fire a prominent member of his administration. It was not an act of taking responsibility, there was no admission of guilt or mistakes, but rather the move was actually designed to correct a situation – something we have not seen in this country in a long time. We’ve seen the Bush Administration mark a scapegoat, like former FEMA Director Michael Brown, but never a new appointment intended to correct or change course. The fact that this change of direction may have emanated from the first President Bush's camp does not diminish the importance.

Later in the day, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous of ABC News, and CNN’s Lou Dobbs, finally used the “L” word – they said that the President’s statements to reporters that Rumsfeld would stay as Defense Secretary through the remainder of the Bush Administration was a lie.

Transformation.

For the last two election cycles, the Republicans have bred fear as a campaigning tactic. They have conflated everything they can think of with the “War on Terror”, including Iraq. They have even stated that if we lose the war in Iraq, then hundreds or thousands of terrorists will come to America to fight in our very streets.

It is ironic that a major reason for the huge Republican losses was exactly the emotion they thought served them best – fear. It was not the fear they had hoped for, not the fear of invading terrorists, but rather fear of an arrogant group of men and women isolating us from the world, increasing anger against us everywhere, using up our treasury for poorly conceived military adventures, ignoring catastophes at home, and invading our privacy for unknown purposes without oversight. The American public has seen what one-party Republican rule is, and they have come away, finally, terrified.

So, it was with an unexpected relief that many of us greeted Wednesday morning. It was not a surprise that there would be relief – we expected that. But it was not just the release of tension, waiting for the election results, nor did it involve just the release of anger at our opponents. The power of the relief made us realize just how much fear we had been experiencing, that if the American public could not correct the situation we were in more trouble than we could handle. Well, even with the election results, we’re still in grave danger. But we feel like we can breathe again, and there is hope. Transformation!


Rumsfeld Resignation

Rumsfeld said that Iraq was too complex for others to understand. But it is clear what we should understand about Rumsfeld. His stated goal was to make a more agile and deadly force, but he was not agile enough to adjust his own strategies.

One of his greatest failures was not realizing that his use of Afghan troops without loyalties, which worked so well to oust the Taliban, would not work to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. And his strategy of using a light mobile force, which was so effective in ending Saddam Hussein's regime, was not altered when it became obvious it was not the solution to provide security for the post-war environment.

He seemed to imply that he was a sort of intellectual and military historian, but he ignored lessons in military and political history from World War II to Yugoslavia. And when others disagreed with him, he just removed them – so much for the logic of the argument being the ultimate persuader.

Many on the left have suggested that Rumsfeld was just carrying out the orders of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. But this man had full and utter control of the Pentagon, and he was a cancer on the military.


John Kerry Presidential Hopes, R.I.P.

What are the qualities that are needed in a successful presidential candidate? The ability to think on one’s feet may be primary, but even more important is the ability to reverse a mistake as quickly as possible.

John Kerry should have scheduled an exclusive interview with a reputable reporter and anchorman, for instance Wolf Blitzer or Charlie Gibson, with the requirement that the entire clip of his “controversial comments” be played. Then Kerry should have pointed out the obvious context, reprimanded the media for taking his comments out of context, apologized if the feelings of troops were hurt by the misrepresentation by both Republicans and the media, and then said that he would cancel appearances for the rest of this campaign cycle so that Iraq would not be eclipsed as the main story.

But instead, Kerry was caught flat-footed, well into two news cycles. His first response seemed arrogant, and his second statement was surrender. It’s never obvious what type and variety of advisors and consultants a prospective candidate is listening to at any particular time, but it doesn’t matter. Kerry has had two election cycles to get his team and his message right, and he has failed.

Nation At War

Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless, surprise attack on the United States.  We will not forget that treachery, and we will accept nothing less than victory over the enemy. – President George W. Bush in speech at Air Force Commencement, June 2, 2004

I had other priorities in the '60s than military service. – Then Future Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in an interview with Washington Post reporter George C. Wilson, April 5, 1989

Colbert: "Do you support the war in Iraq?"

Jones: "I do support the war in Iraq."

Colbert: "So, why aren't you serving in Iraq?  You're a healthy guy."

Jones: "I'm doing my part by running for Congress and supporting them."

-- David Nelson Jones (age 25), Republican candidate for U. S. Representative in California’s 30th district, in an interview (see video pt. 2) with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, November 1, 2006

Somewhere at a Starbuck’s, there’s a clatch of members of the Young Republican Club from the nearby university. Biff and Chip and Herbert III are sipping their lattes, as they discuss their futures in finance, taking the reins of their fathers’ companies, the upcoming Republican victory in the midterms, and the war in Iraq.

They are laughing about John Kerry’s supposed gaffe, theorizing that this is some kind of Freudian Democrat slip. (One of the few times they use less than proper English, using the lower-class adjective “Democrat” instead of the more proper “Democratic”, in allegiance to their leaders who’ve decided that the proper adjective gives too much credit to their opposition.) “Why don’t the Democrats support our troops?”, wonders Biff, as he eyes a blueberry scone. “They don’t share our values”, responds Chip. “By the way, Herbie, have you ordered the strippers for the frat party?”

We are not a country at war, at least not in the way we were in World War II. There are no victory gardens, tire drives, war bonds, rationing. The streets around recruitment offices are not crowded with young men eager to go to Iraq. During WWII there were incidents of suicide by men who were embarrassed at not being able to enlist due to 4F status. Despite the quantity of yellow magnetic ribbons on the backs of SUVs, Iraq and Afghanistan are sideshows to American life. The families of troops may feel the constant weight, but the great majority of Americans pay little attention to the ongoing sacrifice.

During the less than 4 years of World War II, almost 20 million individuals served in the military (see World War II casualties: Casualties by branch of service) out of a population of less than 150 million (see Historical Census Data (1790-1990)). At any one time, upwards of 10 million were serving. As of 2004, the total in the armed services was about 1.5 million, in a population over 300 million (see Military of the United States: Personnel in each service). So, for more than twice the population, we have 15% of the military personnel that we did during WWII.

It always seemed odd that a World War II hero like the first President Bush would pull strings to get his son into a Texas Air National Guard unit that was certain never to go to Vietnam, to essentially help his son evade service. However, as we saw in 1980, when George H. W. Bush left behind his principles for a spot on the Republican ticket, the first President Bush was at base a pragmatist. He did not see service in Vietnam as important as service in World War II; he knew that US survival did not depend on the outcome of the Vietnam War.

It is no surprise that today’s conservative youth, whose idols, including Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, never saw combat, would skip the route with the highest potential sacrifice. So while young men during the World War II era were ashamed when they could not serve, even the most vociferous supporters of the Iraq War truly feel no lack of honor in not only avoiding service, but also in not even thinking about it. Perhaps this is an implicit acknowledgement that, even with all the hype, conservatives don't really believe that the outcome of the Iraq War is all that important.

Let’s face it. We're not a Nation At War. We're a Nation At Starbuck's.