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.