I agree it is VERY likely that Civil War will be the mechanism of resolution in Iraq.

You have been talking about civil war for forever. It's not happening.

Just like your prediction of a draft. I guess you were wrong about that too.

"You have been talking about civil war for forever. It's not happening."

It is arguable that civil war is on the horizon what with the current level of violence in Iraq. We must also remember that this bloodshed takes place with hundreds of thousands of US and coalition forces present. Can we imagine the carnage there will be when political circumstances mean America and its allies leave Iraq?

IslandDog

There is a partial Civil War Right NOW in IRAQ. WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN?

A different one than you thankfully. There is no civil war in Iraq col. Forget what the NYT tells you.

NYT, CNN, Phila Inquirer, Washington Post, AP et al.


Iraq war going well?

Re "A principled stand" (Our Opinions, June 20):

The Daily News is entitled to its own opinions but not to its own facts. Some congressmen such as Howard Berman choose to go with the flow and be ranked with the winning side while others like Brad Sherman choose to make a statement by not participating in a game where the deck is stacked.

The facts are, the Iraq war is not going well; it is already a civil war. The Bush administration has for some time been setting the new Iraqi government up to be the fall guy when it fails. If Bush has so much faith in the Iraqis, why did he wait to notify them of his visit only five minutes before he recently sneaked into the (ahem) safety of their country? Yep, everything is going well in Iraq according to King George. Ask the parents of the two soldiers that were just found beheaded; you might get a different assessment.

- Philip Wilt

Van Nuys

Open season

Re "Death toll reaches 2,500" (June 16):

George W. Bush talks about amnesty for Iraqi insurgents - this while our children are still in Iraq fighting and dying. This is the second time he has declared open season on our soldiers. Mentioning amnesty while combat operations are still occurring is just another way of saying "bring 'em on." Historically amnesty is offered when aggression is halted as a way for the populace to rebuild their civil society.

Oh, but wait - there's more. Just to further prove their state of oblivion, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that 2,500 "is a number." I think these two statements say it all. This occupation is disastrous and is not for the security of the United States. We must get out of there now.

- Sharon Graham

Huntington Beach


Nir Rosen: The Civil War Continues

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June 09, 2006
Nir Rosen: The Civil War Continues

Interesting week so far. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, "the Sheikh of the Slaughterers," has been slain. Everybody wants a piece of this. The Jordanians are claiming a role. The Americans of course, Iraq's security forces. The US ambassador to Iraq hails it as a "good omen," which sounds rather weak, if the best the US can come up with in Iraq are omens. Perhaps they will say it's another "turning point" or a "milestone," because we haven't had enough of those since the Occupation began. Perhaps we have "turned the corner," in Iraq, which, after the thousand corners claimed turned by the Americans, makes for an interesting geometrical structure. Perhaps this will "break the back of the insurgency"? No, it is not even a good omen, it is an ominous omen.

Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. This civil war may have begun the day the Americans overthrew the old order in Iraq and established a new one, with Shias on top and Sunnis on the bottom, or it may have begun more specifically in 2005 when Iraq's police and army finally retaliated against the Sunni population for harboring the resistance, insurgency and the terrorists like Zarqawi who targeted Shia civilians. Sectarian cleansing began to increase and suddenly Sunnis felt targeted and vulnerable for the first time. Sunni militias that targeted the Americans became the Sunni militias that defended Sunni neighborhoods from the incursions of Shia militias and they began to retaliate following Shia attacks. But the Shias of Iraq have the police and army at their disposal, not to mention the American military, which has become merely one more militia among the many in Iraq, at times striking Shia targets but still mostly targeting the Sunni population, as the Haditha affair demonstrates.

So time to dispel some myths. Zarqawi did not really belong to al Qaeda. He would have been more shocked than anybody when Colin Powel spoke before the United Nations in the propaganda build up to the war and mentioned Zarqawi publicly for the first time, accusing him of being the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Zarqawi in fact did not get along with Bin Ladin when he met him years earlier. He found Bin Ladin and the Taliban insufficiently extreme and refused to join al Qaeda or ally himself with Bin Ladin, setting up his own base in western Afghanistan instead, from where he fled to the autonomous area of Kurdistan in Iraq, outside of Saddam's control, following the US attacks on Taliban controlled Afghanistan in late 2001. Zarqawi only went down into Iraq proper when the Americans liberated it for him. He had nothing to do with al Qaeda until December 2004, when he renamed his organization Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or Al Qaeda in Iraq as it has become known.

Why did he do this? It was a great deal for him and Bin Ladin. Zarqawi needed the prestige associated with the Al Qaeda brand name in global jihadi circles. He could not claim to be fighting a more important battle than merely the struggle for Iraq. He was fighting the Crusaders and Jews everywhere and doing it in the name of Bin Ladin, still the elder statesman of Jihad and the hero of the anti Soviet jihad which Zarqawi all but missed by the time he arrived in Afghanistan. For Bin Ladin and his deputy Zawahiri it was also a great deal. Al Qaeda was defunct. Its leadership hiding in the Pakistani wilderness, completely cut off from the main front in today's jihad, Iraq. When Zarqawi assumed the al Qaeda brand name he gave a needed fillip to Bin Ladin who could now associate himself with the Iraqi jihad, where the enemy was being successfully killed every day, and where the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world were turned to, far more than Afghanistan.

Zarqawi was not very important in the first place, and hardly represented the majority of the resistance or insurgency. When he arrived in northern Iraq he was a nobody. After the war he descended into Iraq proper and began to organize the disparate foreign fighters who had come to fight with Saddam's army against the American invasion. Shocked by the disappearance of Saddam's army and the easy American victory, these arab fighters from Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, were without leadership, and Zarqawi was a charismatic leader, and fearless, according to all accounts. Although he claimed several significant attacks, such as the United Nations bombing and the assassination of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq leader Muhamad Bakir al Hakim, Zarqawi and his foreign fighters were a numerically insignificant proportion of the anti American fighters.

It took the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq, the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi's fault. The truth was that much of Iraq's Sunni population, alienated by the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse during raids, supported and participated in the anti American resistance. Even many Shias claimed resistance. Muqtada Sadr, the most powerful and popular single individual leader in Iraq, led two "intifadas" against the Americans in the spring and summer of 2004, and his men still rest on their laurels, claiming they too took part in the Mukawama, or resistance. But by blaming Zarqawi for everything the Americans created the myth of Zarqawi and aspiring Jihadis throughout the Arab world ate it up and flocked to join his ranks or at least send money. Zarqawi was the one defying the Americans, something their own weak leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, could not do, having sold out long ago. It was then comical when the Americans released the Zarqawi video out-takes and mocked him for fumbling with a machine gun. Having inflated his reputation they were now trying to deflate it. But it was too late. Jihadis were not going to trust the Americans. Zarqawi had proved how good he was at killing Americans and Shias and evading capture. Whether he was proficient in using a particular machine gun was besides the point, he was very good with bombs, with knives, and certainly successful with his strategy. See the excellent blog by "The Angry Arab" for more on this.

The bulk of the resistance and insurgency was Iraqi and they had different goals than Zarqawi. Often Zarqawi's fighters clashed with indigenous Iraqi fighters, who wanted only to liberate Iraq and regain political power, but who did not care for Zarqawi's puritan ways or his global jihad. It is likely that they may have provided the tip that cost Zarqawi his life. But in death Zarqawi struck one final blow for his cause. He had come to Iraq to fight the infidels and become a martyr, gaining entry to paradise. And so he did, the infidels finally killed him and his supporters now believe he is in paradise. This only proves that Iraq is the place to go to if you want to gain entry to paradise, kill infidels, and become a martyr. More will flock to replace him and avenge him. Expect to see a new group, naming itself after Zarqawi, claiming responsibility for attacks targeting Shia leaders or Shia shrines in Iraq, but also in Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, where tensions between Sunnis and Shias have been simmering since the war in Iraq.

We in the media are often pilloried for only reporting "the bad news" in Iraq. But there is no good news. Its too dangerous to even tell you how bad things really are, but they are worse than what you see on the media, not better. The insurgency is passe, Iraq is about the civil war, chaos, anarchy, random and deliberate violence everywhere. And it is spreading throughout the region. Instead of stabilizing the Middle East, the US war in Iraq is tearing it apart, destabilizing it, reviving radical Islam and jihadism and giving a bad name to reform and democracy.

We in the media are often pilloried for only reporting "the bad news" in Iraq. But there is no good news. Its too dangerous to even tell you how bad things really are, but they are worse than what you see on the media, not better. The insurgency is passe, Iraq is about the civil war, chaos, anarchy, random and deliberate violence everywhere. And it is spreading throughout the region. Instead of stabilizing the Middle East, the US war in Iraq is tearing it apart, destabilizing it, reviving radical Islam and jihadism and giving a bad name to reform and democracy.

One man's opinion. Not fact by a longshot. And he couldn't be more wrong that "there is no good news." Further, he apparently considered the status quo ante "stable," which it was not.

If you listen to the reporters that move with the insurgency, you'll know that there is no civil war in Iraq. If there were you'd be seeing many, many more killings. There is limited sectarian violence, and there are people trying to bait civil war, but unfortunately for the Col most of the Iraqi people are smart enough to see that they are being played.

Col can't prove his civil war theory with columnists either. So now he tells us it's a "partial" civil war. I just love how you make bs up as you go along.

Here is the pefect one for you col. The title alone is perfect.

https://forums.joeuser.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=3&AID=121226#939533

Nir Rosen has got to be one of the most boring speakers I've ever heard. It is physically draining to sit through one of his talks. I've listened to him in person and on C-Span because, despite his poor oratory skills, he does make interesting points. And he has done so here, for the most part.

Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. This civil war may have begun the day the Americans overthrew the old order in Iraq and established a new one, with Shias on top and Sunnis on the bottom, or it may have begun more specifically in 2005 when Iraq's police and army finally retaliated against the Sunni population for harboring the resistance, insurgency and the terrorists like Zarqawi who targeted Shia civilians. Sectarian cleansing began to increase and suddenly Sunnis felt targeted and vulnerable for the first time. Sunni militias that targeted the Americans became the Sunni militias that defended Sunni neighborhoods from the incursions of Shia militias and they began to retaliate following Shia attacks. But the Shias of Iraq have the police and army at their disposal, not to mention the American military, which has become merely one more militia among the many in Iraq, at times striking Shia targets but still mostly targeting the Sunni population, as the Haditha affair demonstrates.

"Civil War" and "sectarian violence" is a matter of semantics. Was Lebanon a party to civil war or sectarian violence from 1975 until 1989? Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995? Sri Lanka to this very day? What's going on between Fatah and Hamas in West Bank and Gaza--civil war or sectarian violence? It's hard to say, and there's usually a political motivation to decide on one term or the other. But "Civil War" in Iraq did not begin in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Saddams fall. The insurgency itself didn't even really begin taking shape until May or June of 2003, and at that point it was Baathist-influenced, if not outright operated. The 2005 estimate is much more accurate.

As for the rest of what he says, I'll give my take. I don't know enough about Zarqawi's background or activities to say whether Rosen is right or wrong. I suspect Rosen doesn't know all the details either, as the savage from Zarqa was a shadowy figure in his own right. When was he in Iraq? Was he treated in Baghdad in 2002? I don't know. I don't. Rosen probably doesn't either. Zarqawi was important, as he was a principle antagonizer in the Sunni-Shiite bloodletting that continues, virtually unchecked. The Shiites were only going to take so many car and truck bombs on marketplaces and mosques, assassinations of mullahs and political leaders before retaliating. And now the Sunnis will have hell to pay. The Sunnis can count themselves lucky that it's only death squads they have to fear as of yet. Imagine if the Shiite military deployed heavy artillery and helicopters against a town like Fallujah, Tikrit, Ramadi, or Hit.

Rosen is right here:

It took the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq, the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi's fault. The truth was that much of Iraq's Sunni population, alienated by the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse during raids, supported and participated in the anti American resistance.

True. The more one looks the more it turns out that native Iraqi Sunnis are and have been, since the beginning, the overwhelming majority of the insugency. They enjoy widespread popular support throughout much of Sunni Iraq. The roadside bombs that sadly nickel and dime our troops are almost always the work of the native born Iraqi Sunnis. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a small group who maintains their "street cred" like a street gang trying to horn in on another's territory. What they lack in numbers and grass roots support they make up in sheer viciousness, intimidation, and savagry. The Sunnis are pissed off that we humiliated them through our invasion and occupation. I don't feel sorry for them one bit, but I am aware that they are pissed and why they are. Sunnis have their own peculiar logic about Iraq. They've always been in power in Iraq, going back to the Ottoman Empire, and they believe theyare more numerous than they are--there's a widespread belief among the Sunnis that they are the majority, and that when the reality that they are not is recognized by anyone, it is a manifestation of some conspiracy against them, by either the Americans, or (gasp!!) the Jews.

The bulk of the resistance and insurgency was Iraqi and they had different goals than Zarqawi. Often Zarqawi's fighters clashed with indigenous Iraqi fighters, who wanted only to liberate Iraq and regain political power, but who did not care for Zarqawi's puritan ways or his global jihad. It is likely that they may have provided the tip that cost Zarqawi his life.

I'm in accord. Zarqawi pissed off the wrong people for too long, and the let him know he was more trouble than he was worth.

But in death Zarqawi struck one final blow for his cause. He had come to Iraq to fight the infidels and become a martyr, gaining entry to paradise. And so he did, the infidels finally killed him and his supporters now believe he is in paradise. This only proves that Iraq is the place to go to if you want to gain entry to paradise, kill infidels, and become a martyr. More will flock to replace him and avenge him. Expect to see a new group, naming itself after Zarqawi, claiming responsibility for attacks targeting Shia leaders or Shia shrines in Iraq, but also in Lebanon or Saudi Arabia, where tensions between Sunnis and Shias have been simmering since the war in Iraq.

Now Rosen is trying to sell snake oil. I think he's full of s$%^. It's just as, if not far more, likely that the nationalist elements of the insurgency will take the reigns and destroy much of what's left of the Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQII) network. The Sunni nationalists do not, and will not trust foreigners who wish to emulate Zarqawi, and will not provide them entry or safe-haven in Iraq. How will the foreigners operate if the Shiite militias AND the Sunni insurgents are flushing them out?

We in the media are often pilloried for only reporting "the bad news" in Iraq. But there is no good news. Its too dangerous to even tell you how bad things really are, but they are worse than what you see on the media, not better. The insurgency is passe, Iraq is about the civil war, chaos, anarchy, random and deliberate violence everywhere. And it is spreading throughout the region. Instead of stabilizing the Middle East, the US war in Iraq is tearing it apart, destabilizing it, reviving radical Islam and jihadism and giving a bad name to reform and democracy.

Unfortunately, he's right more than he's wrong. There is some good news. But it in no way comes even close to making up for the bad news. The goal should be security, stability, and an end to the rampant violence. Democracy should be the means, but the Administration has painted it as the ends. I'm not sure whether this is civil war, as I don't know what the bar for that is, but it certainly is "chaos, anarchy, random and deliberate violence everywhere." It's also financially draining for the taxpayers, and morale draining for troops who can expect tours of duty in Iraq indefinitely. What will be their breaking point? Six, seven, eight tours? I admire the bravery and selflessness of the men who re-sign for combat, but they cannot do that forever.