Wednesday, March 08, 2006
What is a Civil War Anyway?
So he suited up in gray instead of blue, as did a whole bunch of others, and suddenly there was an army for the Confederate States of America. Fortunately for the Union, there were some pretty tough fellers who decided to suit up in blue. Grant, Sheridan and Sherman come to mind. Should have traded McClellan and Burns to the gray side, but, well, whatever. So you had the USA on one side and the CSA on the other, with armies shooting at each other. Now that's a Civil War.
Gotta hand it to us Americans, we are pretty clear about this stuff.
In Iraq, we have rebuilt the Iraqi Army, and it seems to be composed of both Shiites and Sunnis. The top dog is a Sunni it turns out. Saddam had thrown him in jail, but he wasn't killed. And the armed forces seem to be holding together and quieting down the fanatics and criminals who are trying to foment trouble.
They certainly haven't divided into two (or three) teams and started shooting at each other. The Sunnis haven't withdrawn into Sunniraq. The Kurds haven't formed Kurdiraq. And the Shiites haven't formed Shiiraq (try saying that; easier to sneeze it).
Do you know why? The guys who think they have the biggest reason to do it -- the Sunnis -- would wind up without any oil, no claim to it and in a deep minority. Their "best idea" would be to merge sunniland into Jordan. Hah. Good luck.
No, there is no Civil War in Iraq, all you BDS dreamers and bad sports out there. There is gang warfare. There is al Qaeda terrorism. There is Baathist revanchism. But they're running out of options. The Iraqi Army is standing up and staying together. Our troops are down from 168,000 to 132,000. The Iraqis are up to about 100,000 operating troops. The biggest risk is that the Kurds form Kurdistan, which they would do if they could clearly grab Kirkuk. But that's tough to do without open warfare between the Kurds and Shiites/Sunnis. Now that would be a real Civil War.
Pretty soon we're going to start selling the Iraqi Army equipment again. Oh boy. That might come in handy at the border you know.
4 Comments:
By 
ScurvyOaks, at
Thu Mar 09, 04:02:00 PM:
Well, here comes a cranky concurring opinion. You are right that there is not a civil war underway in Iraq. But the atypical American Civil War is not a very good standard of what constitutes a civil war. Unhappily, your post illustrates the truth of your first line: there is indeed "a lot of ignorance out there about what a Civil War really is."
"Civil war exists when two or more opposing parties within a country resort to arms to settle a conflict or when a substantial portion of the populaton takes up arms against the legitimate government of a country." (West's Encyclopedia of American Law)
Or from a recent research project at the Dept of Political Science at Stanford, civil war "requires a certain threshold of casualties in fighting between governments and organized groups seeking EITHER to control the state or separate from it" (emphasis added).
The weight of your argument seems to be that there is not an effort to form Sunniraq, Kurdiraq and/or Shiiraq. But not all civil wars are regionalist or separatist -- perhaps not even most of them. I won't bore you with a long explanation, but cf. the English Civil War. Or for an American example, consider the Revolutionary War, where you have lots of patriots and lots of tories mixing it up with each other throughout the colonies. That's a more typical example of civil war than at least most of the conflict of 1861-1865. (Yes, I know about the Copperheads and the southern Unionists, but they were very small percentages within each region. The reason for the "most" qualifier in the preceding sentence is that the conflict in the border states looked more like the typical civil war. If you count stars on the Confederate battle flag, you realize that to get to 13, you have to include two of the border states; the CSA claimed Ky. and Mo., which had Confederate pretender governors, even though these states are generally regarded as not having seceded.)
So why is there not a civil war underway in Iraq? The parties engaged in armed conflict with the legitimate government do not have enough popular participation in their effort. The insurgency lacks critical mass. (And it seems to be squandering much of the sympathy that it formerly had among non-participating Sunnis.) So I'm fairly optimistic overall, for the reasons that Tigerhawk regularly lays out.
I hate to be so harsh to a fine analyst with whom I often agree, but I think you were well off target with your definition of civil war.
By Cardinalpark, at
Thu Mar 09, 04:27:00 PM:
Most of your counters I would posit are more rebellions of sorts than civil war. And I agree that I could have added the key element of your post with which I agree -- popular support. If you want to say that these various rebellions are definitionally civil war, I will yield the floor. I don't see it that way. Maybe we can use large caps to define large scale CW, versus smal caps maybe garden variety type "skirmishes."
Where you will have an intersection of popular support and a military divide -- which would reflect an actual Civil War in my judgment -- would be if the Kurdish Pesh Merga and the Kurds seceded to form Kurdistan. This would, we would agree I think, be a Civil War.
The sunnis alone are likely only to rebel per se and attempt a coup d'etat. To succeed, they would need to wrest control of the military away from the current govt. I will go out on a limb and say that ain't possible. And secession as I suggested is unlikely.
If the Kurds secede, I think you have a CW. If you have continued "gang warfare" rebellion-type activity by the unhappy sunnis, I don't think you've got a civil war really.
And while I think there has been much discussion of Iran's involvement here (which I am sure is true to a degree), I struggle to see to what end. Killing Americans? Maybe, but in very small numbers, and decreasing. That doesn't really accomplish much. I don't think the Iranians really want to see the Kurds withdraw and form Kurdistan. I think that is a joint Iranian and Turkish nightmare, given their Kurdish populations.
So what is the point? Mostly to keep Iraq relatively weak. Period. As long as there is some noise, Iraq is delayed in rebuilding, delayed in competing on the oil market, delayed in stabilizing and equipping its armed forces.
It's all about buying time for the Iranians.
But no CW.
Sorry if I was definitionally sloppy.
By 
, at
Thu Mar 09, 04:44:00 PM:
"There is gang warfare. There is al Qaeda terrorism. There is Baathist revanchism. But they're running out of options."
Sounds like you are running out things to call it other than Civil War.
Wishful Thinking does not make good foreign policy.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Mar 09, 06:11:00 PM:
Very clever and rhetorical. But that doesn't make for good debate. Perhaps if you, you know, read the other comments first?
