Modifying that War
Em--- oops, I mean Number Three notes the press and American public’s inability to call what is going in Iraq what it most certainly is -- a civil war. Here’s a scholarly definition:
"Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter's ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain." (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)
Note that the definition was expounded before the ill-advised invasion of Iraq so it cannot be said to reflect a liberal attempt at categorizing the Iraqi situation post factum for political purposes. By any reasonable metric, there has been a civil war raging in Iraq for more than two years. Most of the violence there has always been “sectarian” (my favorite adjective), whether we want to call them sectarian Sunni insurgents or some other name, and not by the hand of Al Qaeda. The mainstream press refusing to call a spade a spade is just another barometer of how beholden and deferential they are to the Bush administration’s rhetoric.
posted by Paul @ 8:21 PM
4 Comments:
Since this is a technical poli sci definition, let me ask this: do the large numbers of civilan casualties in Iraq count as "battle deaths" under this definition? The definition seems to be written for circumstances where you have some sort of regular insurgent army (I think of Chechnya or Congo, for example), not for a situation where you've just got these covert militias running around. I'm not an "IR" guy so I don't know the answer to this, but I am curious. It seems possible that Iraq would still not technically qualify under this definition.
Oh there's no question we would be referring to this as the Iraqi civil war if our own government's actions weren't the proximate cause of it.
The best historical analogies are the early years of the civil wars in Lebanon and El Salvador. These were primarily contests between guerilla insurgent militias and central government forces--not pitched battles between armies.
It will not be referred to as a civil war in mainstream political discourse until the administration in power acknowleges it (either this one or the next). Minitru controls the language, and don't you forget it!
P.S. TenaciousMcD, you might want to read this piece by political scientist James Fearon.
Frances, I'm not doubting that this is, in fact, a "civil war." Over that we all agree. But what struck me about that definition was how pseudo-sciency it is, in that typical IR way: as if the quantification of battle deaths that occur between regular governmental and non-governmental troops could tell you whether you had crossed the "civil war" threshhold or not. That's all I was getting at.
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