Song and Dance
Another flashback to a Mitch Day July 4th barbeque, brings this bit of news to the forefront of my mind today.
I'll be damned.... a civil war in Iraq. Who would have thought that?
Plenty of people, obviously too bad none of them held elective office, or more specifically any sway in the Bush administrations decision to go to war in Iraq to snuff out WMD.... err fight terrorism... err spread democracy..... one of these(the answer of course hinges on when you actually asked the question).
The rolling justification aside, the worst part of the entire Iraq situation has been the inability to learn anything about Iraq, and how the region and its sects operate and relate to one another.
The foolishness of Dick Cheney telling us that we'd be "greeted as liberators" while indicative of either a profound unawareness of Middle Eastern dynamics, or the sort of arrogance that shrunk the British empire to its current size(a trip to the Falklands anyone?), can actually be more or less understood. Sadly, we stand in Iraq more than 3 years later and listen to Donald Rumsfeld debate symantics about "civil war".
Will this administration ever face up the situation in Iraq that it has fostered? Or will be keep hearing about the "last throes"??, about Iraqi forces standing up, or even more naively about how "freedom"(as this administration loosely defines it) is the basic desire of every human being.
The "civil war" they wont talk about has been going on since day one. The seeds were planted long ago. Even before Saddam and Rumsfeld smiled and shook hands in advance of shipments of arms from the Reagan Admin to this point on the Axis of Evil.
posted by The Salmon of Knowledge @ 10:24 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
IT is not a civil war yet, on the basis of there have not been any rival governments formed or successionist movements. However, if you characterized it as "Belfast on 'roids" - that, at the moment - would be a more apt description. however, time will tell.
Under current administation policy we are able to conduct wars against -isms, not just governments. If we accept this (I don't) then we must also accept the idea that there can be a civil war not involving governments or wannabe governments.
I think the rub here is that Rummy is using the Western concept of what constitutes a civil war and a trying to apply it completely out of context.
In the conservative muslim world, religion is close to be synonymous with the State(as Mohammed hismelf was political leader, religious leader, military leader, etc) thus there is no need to form rival governments.... the sects are rival governments in and of themselves
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