I think Charles Krauthammer has an excellent article as well:
ADDENDUM:
BTW, vroom and Zap, I think part of the article gets into the semantic points you were hashing over:
[i]This whole debate about civil war is surreal. What is the insurgency if not a war supported by one (minority) part of Iraqi society fighting to prevent the birth of the new Iraqi state supported by another (majority) part of Iraqi society?
By definition that is civil war, and there’s nothing new about it. As I noted here in November 2004: “People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side” – the Sunni insurgency – “is fighting it.”
Indeed, until very recently that has been the case: ex-Baathist insurgents (aided by the foreign jihadists) fighting on one side, with the United States fighting back in defense of a new Iraq dominated by Shiites and Kurds.
Now all of a sudden everyone is shocked to find Iraqis going after Iraqis. But is it not our entire counterinsurgency strategy to get Iraqis who believe in the new Iraq to fight Iraqis who want to restore Baathism or impose Taliban-like rule? Does not everyone who wishes us well support the strategy of standing up the Iraqis so we can stand down? And does that not mean getting the Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves?
Hence the gradual transfer of war-making responsibility. Hence the decline of American casualties. Hence the rise of Iraqi casualties.
What we don’t want to see is the private militias taking the law into their own hands. The army, by all accounts, has remained cohesive, with relatively good discipline. The problem is the police forces, which have been infiltrated by some of the Mahdi Army and other freelance Shiite vigilantes.[/i]
March 26, 2006: Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It’s not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It’s not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What’s happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don’t personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.
After Saddam’s government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into accepting your rule. For the last three years, the Sunni Arabs thought they could terrorize their way back into power. Didn’t work. Now the Kurds and Shia Arabs are not only too strong to defeat, but are coming into Sunni Arab neighborhoods and killing. Sometimes the victims are men who actually took part in Saddam era atrocities. But often the victims are just some Sunni Arabs who were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The government doesn’t want all these payback killings, most of them carried out by men working for extremist Shia Arab political parties. In particular, the Badr and Sadr militias, both backed by Iran, have the most blood on their hands, although other Shia Arab groups, and even some Kurds, have joined in. The government has avoided cracking down on the Iran supported militias so far. Militarily, the government has had its hand full with the Islamic terrorists and Sunni Arab gangs. Taking on the pro-Iran Shia Arab gangs would produce political fallout as well, because these militias belonged to Shia Arab political parties. While the Shia Arabs are 60 percent of the population, if they split into too many mutually hostile factions, they could lose control of the government to a coalition containing Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
The Shia Arab death squads are basically terrorists, and if there’s one thing all Iraqis can agree on, it’s the need to stamp out the terrorist activity. This is providing the government with an opening against the Iran sponsored militias. Iraqis, even Shia Arab Iraqis, have always been fearful, and suspicious, of Iran. Iraqi Shia Arabs fought against Iran during the 1980s war, not because they loved Saddam, but because they feared Iranian domination. The Sadr and Badr groups are vulnerable in this area, and the government is apparently going to exploit it.
March 24, 2006: Back on March 7th Muhammed Hilah Hammad al Ubaydi, better known as Abu Ayman, was arrested by Iraqi and Coalition security forces. He was the principal terrorist leader in the southern part of Baghdad Province and northern Babil. When Saddam was in power, Abu Ayman was a senior aide to the Chief of Staff of Intelligence. The leadership of the Sunni Arab terrorism against the post-Saddam government has been men like Abu Ayman. Several hundred of these guys, all former commanders in Saddams force of professional terrorists, have been running a bloody, clever, although unsuccessful, campaign against the new government. In particular, the Sunni Arabs have worked the Arab and Western media effectively. Careful observers will note that a disproportionate number of the Iraqis interviewed by the Western media are Sunni Arabs. The clueless Western journalists often let their subjects admit that they, or someone in their family worked for Saddam military or secret police. Naturally, these interviewees are not happy with the new government and all those American troops. That’s what the foreign journalists want to hear, and fellows like Abu Ayman, who were in charge of playing the foreign media when Saddam was in charge, are still there to help arrange those interviews.
Another good look and attempt at analysis on the nature of the insurgency:
DEFINING THE INSURGENCY: There are several competing definitions of what is happening in Iraq. At the more polemical end lurks the shadow of Vietnam, where commentators argue that the conflict is centered around two poles reminiscent of a Maoist-style insurgency against American occupation.
In this camp, one version popular amongst segments of the antiwar left who are sympathetic with the ‘right to resist’ (especially activists like Tariq Ali: http://www.isreview.org/issues/42/Arnove_Ali.shtml ), maintain that it is a nationalist uprising against US-led occupation. Others, like Christopher Hitchens ( http://www.radioblogger.com/#001487 ) and Victor Hanson, also stress the bipolar nature of the conflict, but present it as a microcosm and site of the global struggle between democracy and civil society against extremist Islamist radicals, assisted by the Baath party trying to make a comeback.
This side allows for elements of ethnic conflict, but emphasise that it is being incited deliberately by the jihadists. Ethnic conflict is, in this perspective, symptomatic of the fundamental clash of ideas.
I am still pondering this one.There is little doubt that jihadists are one element of the insurgency. And I have no sympathy for the campaign of deliberate sabotage and murder being carried out by insurgents against Iraqi civilians and vital utilities like pipelines. But neither of the scenarios above seem to explain the situation satisfactorily.
Were it only a struggle of ideology and ideas, you would expect there to be more cooperation and coalition between Iraqis of different ethnicities who shared the same political/religious goals. Instead, the pattern of the conflict repeatedly divides Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. If the foreign jihadists had successfully persuaded the feuding groups that this should be a pan-Islamic holy war against American imperialism, one would expect the different tribes to form alliances.
In this regard, Stephen Biddle’s recent essay is compelling ( http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/newsarticle.php?id=1914 ). Putting it simply, the centre of the conflict is distrust between Iraqis, an actual or potential civil war. This is in contrast to Robb ( EMERGENT INTELLIGENCE IN OPEN SOURCE WARFARE - Global Guerrillas ), who stresses cohesion and cooperation between different parts of the insurgency, which he argues is dangerous precisely because it operates without a clear centre of gravity but in a loose network of ‘open source’ warfare which outpaces efforts to neutralise it, and mutates and adapts like a virus. His prescription is to delegate more power to Shiite and Kurdish forces, using their local knowledge as a rival sophisticated network.
But the difficulty here again is the pattern of who is fighting and killing who. Empirically, it seems, American presence is not uniting insurgents to the extent that they are only targeting Americans. As a British soldier remarked to me, the main challenge is not whether Iraqis trust us, but whether they trust other Iraqis. And there is also the chaos element. As well as seeing the post-Saddam instability as a product of an internal power struggle, there is crime. Mayhem in Iraq is being leveraged by a global criminal market that is strengthening as we speak.
This all reminds me of just how crucial it is to define the problem accurately, and as it changes, in order to devise a sound counter-strategy. But to all the wonks, pundits and participants out there, how do we devise a strategy that deals with the ethnicised dimension of the conflict, as well as the underworld which feeds it? Or, despite the recent escalation in sectarian violence, is the current strategy working outside the areas of concentrated conflict?
Why doesn’t ol’ Ralphie boy take a stroll through Baghdad than and stop and smell the roses? Instead of riding in a armored humvee with a mounted M-60 to lean on? Give me a break. I don’t know how people don’t see that this is Vietnam all over again. Over there they smiled at us all day too, but at night it was the freakin Tet Offensive. Its called asymmetrical warfare.
[quote]Odogg wrote:
Why doesn’t ol’ Ralphie boy take a stroll through Baghdad than and stop and smell the roses? Instead of riding in a armored humvee with a mounted M-60 to lean on? Give me a break. I don’t know how people don’t see that this is Vietnam all over again. Over there they smiled at us all day too, but at night it was the freakin Tet Offensive. Its called asymmetrical warfare. [/quote]
What the fuck does that have to do with a civil war?
[quote]doogie wrote:
Odogg wrote:
Why doesn’t ol’ Ralphie boy take a stroll through Baghdad than and stop and smell the roses? Instead of riding in a armored humvee with a mounted M-60 to lean on? Give me a break. I don’t know how people don’t see that this is Vietnam all over again. Over there they smiled at us all day too, but at night it was the freakin Tet Offensive. Its called asymmetrical warfare.
What the fuck does that have to do with a civil war?[/quote]
He’s right actually. I like Ralph Peters, met him once in DC, but I think the majority of that article is off base. Read some Iraqi bloggers, you can find links from Andrew Sullivan, the Belgravia Dispatch, or a lot of other political sites. They live in the country, usually in Baghdad, and see death and destruction and sectarian violence every day. Whatever label you want to give it, the security situation in Iraq is a complete mess.