Of course it's a civil war....

"War of the Words"

Throughout the week, there's been a big furor over NBC, the Los Angeles Times, and other news outlets deciding that the situation in Iraq can be classified as a civil war.
People think NBC was first, but actually it was the right-leaning Christian Science Monitor that first began calling Iraq a "deepening civil war" months ago. They are the only ones who got it right.
Today, Colin Powell came out directly against the president, according to major news outlets, saying that the conflict in Iraq meets the standard of a civil war. He told CNN's Hala Gorani in Dubai that the Bush Administration should acknowledge that.
When we first went in, Powell allegedly told Bush regarding the war "if you break it, it's yours."
It's broken, but unfortunately it's not just Bush's, it's all ours.
The Bush Administration, sadly but predictably, still denies there's a civil war in Iraq.
National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, said on Monday: "You have not yet had a situation...where you have clearly defined and opposing groups vying not only for power but for territory."
He's wrong. There are three.
The Sunni and Shiites are pretty clearly defined groups. They are so defined that they are able to round up random people on the street and sort out the shiites from the sunnis by checking names and I.D. Tell our troops that can't go into Sadr City to look for a kidnapped U.S. soldier that there's no "clearly defined" shiite group. Tell soldiers patroling the Anbar Province, AKA the Sunni Stronghold, that there's no "clearly defined" Sunni group.
And once you cross a line in the north you are no longer in Iraq. The Kurds have declared their territory is Kurdistan, the long-desired Kurdish homeland. At the border to Kurdistan, you are required to remove any Iraqi flags from your vehicle. How much more "clearly defined" does Hadley need the groups to be?
As for defining a civil war, many right-wing bloggers and pundits have whined that the Iraq war is "too complex" to be a civil war.
Oh, NOW they want it to be complex! A month ago it was good vs. evil. Stay the course. Freedom vs. tyranny. What could be simpler? When did they suddenly realize there was nuance?
And when was there a "simple" civil war? Ours? Our civil war was extremely complex. Try going to any large group of people and start a conversation about what the U.S. Civil War was about. Slavery? Economics? Power? It wasn't just North vs. South either, as any resident of Kansas or Missouri who knows their history can tell you. In many cases, rival sects threw on a blue or grey uniform just for the right to settle long-standing differences in their own private little bush wars. Another claim, that since foreign countries are involved it can't be a civil war, also falls pretty flat. There were foreign countries involved in our civil war. Some nations who hoped to see America fall transported arms and supplies to the south, exactly like Iran shipping weapons to the shiites or to hezbollah. No different.
So why the fear of calling it a civil war?
Because it will change the mental dynamics of the war.
Some are calling Matt Lauer's "It's a civil war" declaration a "Cronkite moment."
Many of you may not know what this means.
At one point during the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite declared, during a broadcast, that the war had become unwinnable.
That idea gelled in the minds of U.S. citizens. They chewed it up, tasted the foul, pungeant flavoring, and then, finally, with great distaste swallowed it.
After that, the conversation changed to how to get out of Vietnam. Retreat with honor.
Unfortunately, Bush has dug us in so deep, so ineptly, and through such dishonorable means and goals, that I am not sure retreat with honor is possible here.
Iraq is a debacle. It's broken, but unfortunately it's not just Bush's, as Powell stated. It's all of ours.
Any tactician will tell you that if you are fighting a battle where you are not gaining any ground, and in fact losing it, it's time to pull back. You're just wasting resources.
Doesn't mean we should leave, but the entire mission over there should change.
I've said two things from the beginning.
1. Iraqis will have a peaceful democracy when Iraqis want it so bad that no one will stand in their way. The Kurds have proved that. They deserve their Kurdistan. Turkey be damned.
2. Iraq will fracture. Today, tomorrow, next month of five years from now, Iraq will divide. It's a fake country constructed by the British after the fall of the last caliphate, just like all those warring nations in Africa. The people there were forced together regardless of a long history or antagonism by European powers who just wanted their natural resources. Iraq is shaped to allow imperial nations to get oil from the rich fields of the north and south into the Persian Gulf. Period. There was no concern for the shiites, sunnis, kurds, persians, arabs, beduin or chaldeans who inhabited the land in their own distinct territories and culture.
At one point, early on, perhaps it could have been saved. But I don't think so at this point.
It's Yugoslavia 2.0 and us forcing them to stay together is only making things worse. We've dropped a big 2 liter of mountain dew and we think if we keep shaking it somehow the pressure will subside. You're going to have to ease that cap off a bit. Perhaps partitioning is a way to do that to let everyone cool down. I don't really know.
What I do know is what we're doing now, losing ground with no clear goals, isn't a strategy for victory in Iraq's civil war.

Ace of Aces

My second video. Tried to do faster edits this time and keep the pace high and exciting. I also tried to manipulate the footage more to tell the story.

Into the Black

My first attempt at video editing. Enjoy!

And the winner is....polling!

All over the blogosphere there are analyses, celebrations and sage "I told you so"s from left-leaning bloogers, and recriminations, disbelief, wailing and gnashing of teeth from right-leaning bloggers. I'm not going to touch much of that, at least not today.
Today, I want to address the real winner of this election cycle: The polls!
Yes, the polls raced to an astounding victory, after 12 years in the wilderness following the 1994 Republican Revolution.
Castigated and cast out, the way to your follower's hearts was perceived, by politicians, to proudly claim, "Just because those polls are scientifically proven doesn't mean their accurate!"
Of course, if you were paying attention, they only made that proclamation when they were down in the polls. That should have been the first clue that they never really stopped watching them like they claimed.
But after disasterous predictions via exit polling in a couple elections, Americans started to listen: "Yeah, those polls are stupid! Phooey on them! The media just makes them up!"
Well, that all came crashing down in flames on the evening of Nov. 7.
Even the exit polls were like statistical heat-seaking missiles slamming into the pulse of America.
CNN was so confident in its exit polling science that it predicted a Cardin win in the Maryland Senate race while Republican challenger Michael Steele was AHEAD in the actual numbers!
That takes guts...or a lot of confidence in your polling methods.
Although most Democrats never claimed to shun polls, Republicans did. This election cycle, however, showed us that usually what a Republican leader protests (like gay sex, drug use, and the exploitation of children) he's usually secretly approves of, or at least does in his own private shame. No surpise then that Republicans, who most often claim to never listen to polls, were outed as poll-lovers during the last days as well. Republicans jumped up and danced when poll numbers showed the Grand Canyon-esque gulf between them and the American voters closing a few points. "We have the momentum!" Ken Mehlman shouted on news shows all over.
Of course, Tuesday night they discovered that the light at the end of the tunnel was actually a train, but they are now officially out of the closet as poll-lovers. They love them some hot polls!
So how did polls come back? Simple. They had to.
Polling places make a lot of money on accurately predicting outcomes and the mood of large numbers of people for their clients. If their poll numbers are inaccurate, then people don't employ them, they don't get paid, and lots of college students don't make this week's beer money by manning phones and standing outside of voting places accosting old ladies wearing those sunglasses from "V". In a restaurant, if your burger sucks, you make a better burger. There's obviously been some revamping of the 'secret sauce' used to cook up poll numbers. Just look at how accurate they were. Most polls said Dems would gain 25-30 seats in the house and and 5-6 seats in the senate. So, how'd that work out for them?
Dead on the money. Dems have 24 seats with 10 races still too close to call two days later. Chances are half of them will go Dem, if not more. As to the 5-6 Senate seat prediction, that was right on the money too, and the "5 or 6" indecision can be explained by how close a couple of those senate races were.
What does this mean for us as voters?
Well, hold onto your margin of error baby, we're going for a ride! There will be polls on everything! Polls on candidates, polls on trends, lifestyles, economics, hell...I predict there will be polls on polls!
2008 is going to be the year of the poll! That entire election is going to be the most massively poll-driven election you've ever seen. Politicians will point to positive poll numbers as proof positive of the position of the American people.
Republicans will cite polls, Democrats will cite polls, libertarians will cite polls, even evangelicals will cite polls.
You'll be overwhelmed with people pointing to polls.
But here's the thing:
They've been doing it all along. And the ones who claimed to never cite polls, they're usually the ones who read them the most.
I'm not sure what the effect on us will be, but I'd say there's a 96% chance it won't be good.
Of course, there's a margin of error there of about +/- 4%....