Is Iraq in a Civil War?

[shin]

The part on the Daily Show when Stewart and Oliver argue over what to call the war was some of the best bits the Daily Show's done in a long time. John Oliver might be the best 'reporter' the show's ever had.

Stewart: Certainly from an Iraqi perspective, what this is called makes no difference.

Oliver: Oh, really? If you have lost a loved one in this conflict, and statistically if you're an Iraqi you have, wouldn't you rather know it wasn't in a Civil War but rather a territorial arglebargle of regional qualms?

Stewart: 3,000 Iraqis died just this month. To argue over what to call it seems like semantic quibbling.

Oliver: Semantic quibbling? Oh, well, I wouldn't call it that.

Stewart: What would you call it?

Oliver: A minor linguistic flareup between two parties of different terminological points of view.

Stewart: It's really the same thing.

Oliver: It's "same-ey." For now let's agree to disagree on how we state our agreements. Agreed?

[Thorngrub]

lol, ^ classic

[Rit]

kmc said:

I propose, that when our media spends more time discussing whether or not we should call the war a civil war, that our media is broken and must be fixed. I mean really, what the fuck? People die everyday in Iraq, no two politicians can agree on what to do next, and really, we're talking about what to call the war? I mean, we could've called the war Disneyland. It doesn't change the fact that we have no idea what comes next. And that politicians are playing politics for the sake of propagating their power while Americans die for no reason is weak.

This is all so disgusting.

very well stated.

[Mary]

While Iraq Burns

By BOB HERBERT

Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.”

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”

Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months. Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

***

M

[kmc]

Could it be that even Americans hate America?

[phil]

Nope ! But we're addicted to oil !!

[Dr. Drum]

One of the sad ironies of all this is that the Wal-Mart big box retail model that is the catalyst for so much of this gleeful consumption is indeed entirely dependent on cheap oil. And I know and have said here many times before that "war for oil" was obviously a gigantic over-simplification but at the same time, it's not for no reason that America is always so much more concerned about noxious regimes in the Middle East than it is about equally noxious regimes in sub-Saharan Africa or South-East Asia.

[kmc]

A moral evil such as this war is bound to consequence some sort of terrible ramification for this country. It would be the just thing.

[Galactus]

...but that's what Dear Leader told us to do. He said go on about your lives and we'll take care of this. He said don't ask questions, it's my job. He told us we bore no responsibility and so we feel no responsibility. He said we owe it to our country to take our tax cut and go shopping to keep the economy strong. He told us he's the decider and our voices don't matter. He told us he gets his marching orders from a higher power. Now we're supposed to take time from our Thanksgivings and our Christmas and our food and families to care enough to fix it?

[Dr. Drum]

kmc said:

A moral evil such as this war is bound to consequence some sort of terrible ramification for this country. It would be the just thing.

Well, large swathes of the areas of your country that are currently adding population the fastest are set to become deserts under some of the not even most severe global warming models. A suitably Biblical judgement?

Of course, should that happen, it'll happen while the rest of the world is going down with you. And you'll always be able to make Canada an offer we can't refuse to sell you all the water you need anyway.

[kmc]

Mind you, we'll take over Canada before that happens.

[luke]

Fuck that article.

Yeah, there's a lot of "indifference", but there's also plenty of opposition. Most people I know who wouldn't go to Iraq have two reasons- they're lazy (but support the war) or they're in opposition to it.

I wouldn't go to Iraq because I don't think any of us should go to Iraq. "We" didn't start this war. "We" didn't make this big fucking mess. I feel no responsibilty for what's going on in Baghdad, nor should I.

Some idiots sent our army to stir up the Middle East and now I'm supposed to go over there and play Captain America?

This really isn't "our" war. It's "our" responsibility to stay here in the U.S. and do what we can to salvage this mess. Which, from the looks of things about three weeks ago, we're doing. Responsibility HAS kicked in.

There will always be indifference by a large group of people, and that's never a good thing. But the thing that sickens me about that article is that it's ignoring everyone else and accusing some vague, general mass of "holiday shopping zealots" with that tired Little Eichmann bullshit.

So no, I'm not going to feel bad about going Christmas shopping instead of driving up to Chicago and setting myself on fire.

[kmc]

Althugh luke, were Captain America there, the war would've been over 2 days after it started, at most.

Anytime I meet anyone who supports the war nowadays, I ask:

1) Did you hear our latest estimates propose an escalation to at least half a million troops in Iraq?
2) Do you know we are severely missing that mark?
3) Do you think we need to be over there and that we need to "win"?

If they say yes to any of those things, I ask, flat out, "When the fuck are you going to Iraq?"

If you support the war, and think we need to win at all cost, and think the President is right, then you can either go do your part, or get the fuck out of my face.

[rockysigman]

I usually just ask people what the goal in Iraq is and how we will define victory. No one ever has an answer.

Anyone who does have an answer and really believes in it, though, should definately enlist right swift.

[luke]

I don't know anyone who supports the war capable of processing that kind of rational question. Most of them will just start yelling about the terrorists and then try to fight.