Iraq Is Embroiled In Civil War Says Allawi, Will

Two men who are certainly no shrinking violets when it comes to hawkishness have publicly announced something that readers of this blog are long aware of--that Iraq is embroiled in a civil war.

The administration continues their public denial of the obvious.

Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said in a TV interview aired Sunday. His comments were immediately rejected by Britain's defense secretary.

Conservative pundit George Will agrees with Allawi's diagnosis of the situation on the ground in the U.S. ruined country.

(The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Michael) Maples delicately says that although Iraq is not "at this time" in a civil war, "the underlying conditions" for such a war "are present." But civil wars do not usually begin with an identifiable event, such as the firing on Fort Sumter, or proceed to massed, uniformed forces clashing in battles like Shiloh. Iraq's civil war -- which looks more like Spain's in the 1930s -- began months ago.

In Spain, the security forces were united and in three years were victorious. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. commander in the Middle East, recently said that Iraqi forces would cope with a civil war "to the extent they're able to" (Rumsfeld) and "they'll handle it with our help" (Abizaid). Their problematic assumption is that Iraq's security forces have a national loyalty and will not fracture along the fissures of Iraq's sectarian society.

Speaking of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the outspoken kook has published an op-ed in today's Washington Post, typically offending the sensibilities of any reasonably aware Americans with his obfuscation.

History is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately.

This, from one of the central theorists of the historical revisionist idea that the U.S. did not lose the Vietnam War.

Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.

Sounds good? Let GOP stalwart George Will add the missing color commentary:

Conditions in Iraq have worsened in the 94 days that have passed since Iraq's elections in December. And there still is no Iraqi government that can govern. By many measures conditions are worse than they were a year ago, when they were worse than they had been the year before.

Rummy uses an example from one of his prescribed long historical vantage points to argue against withdrawing U.S. troops from their Iraq:

Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

Rumsfeld ignores the fact that the allies had plenty of troops and civilians on the ground in defeated Germany (not to mention the Marshall Plan) to assist the Germans in creating their new society. How does he expect the Americans to do the same thing in Iraq where the security situation is hardly conducive to a similar effort?

And we didn't reject the formerly Communist Eastern Europe for the simple reason that there were newly created economic opportunities for business which conveniently presented themselves therein.

Such bullshittery is one telling symptom of the sickness that has gripped the highest levels of the administration.