The Daily Background

Boy. Talk about State of Denial. The White House still denies that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war:

… [A White House spokesman] also repeated the administration’s insistence that Iraq was not in a civil war. “We’re constantly asked that question, and while the situation is serious, Prime Minister Maliki and President Talabani have said they do not believe it is a civil war,” he said.

It’s obvious to pretty much everybody outside of the White House who has been following events in Iraq in any sort of meaningful way that the country is in civil war.

There are two clear factions: the militant Sunnis and the militant Shiites. Both of them want to control the country without sharing power with the other (this feeling is shared by many non-militant Sunnis and Shiites as well). They’ve resorted to violence, and they’re fighting each other. Violence has been building up for the past few years (at some point the volume of sectarian violence surpassed the violence against US troops, and it’s been climbing ever since) increased to the highest levels ever last month, and shows no sign of abating. If this isn’t a civil war, I don’t know what is.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: American soldiers cannot win an Iraqi civil war. And every day that Americans maintain a visible presence in Iraq is a day that they will be targeted (and continue to harden impressions against the USA in Iraq and the middle east).

I want to take a few moments to note the situation with Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who controls not only a Shiite militia, but also the largest faction of Shiites within the Iraqi parliament. al-Sadr says that the presence of US troops is contributing to the violence in Iraq, and if Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush sometime next week (Wednesday? Thursday?) as the White House plans, he will withdraw his parliament members in a boycott. Says the NYT:

Blocs in Parliament, including Mr. Sadr’s, have threatened to walk out before. Mr. Maliki, a conservative Shiite, relies on Mr. Sadr for political support against Shiite rivals, and a withdrawal of Mr. Sadr’s legislators from the 275-member Parliament could upend the power balance within the main Shiite political coalition. Mr. Sadr controls at least 30 seats in Parliament and three cabinet positions, including that of the Health Ministry, which was besieged for two hours on Thursday by Sunni Arab insurgents armed with mortars and assault rifles.

The US-side is not expected to cancel the meeting, as the Times concludes: “White House officials ignored the Sadr bloc’s threats to withdraw from the government, and said there were no plans to cancel the president’s meetings with Mr. Maliki.” At a time when things are totally chaotic in Iraq, you’d think that the White House wouldn’t want to do anything to make things more chaotic. Well, that’s what you’d think, anyways.

Update: Jonathan Singer of MyDD has more on this stubborn refusal to accept that Iraq is in a civil war. On a side note, if the Bush Administration wanted to fix Iraq, wouldn’t they begin with an honest appraisal of the situation?

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog