The Blue and the Gray
NBC shook up the "Is Iraq actually in civil war, or on the brink, or spiralling toward, civil war" discussion this week by making the call--somewhat like calling an election?--that the situation in Iraq is a civil war.
Why did it take so long? It took so long because, of course, the terms of this debate are, well, if not controlled by, at least heavily influenced by the Administration, and what it is willing or ready to "admit." This bunch has decided that, so long as they don't conceded bad facts, they can at least delay bad news . . . by creating a "debate" over the terms rather than over the substance of . . . what is actually happening in Iraq. And that has been a civil war, for quite a while now.
The news surrounding Bush's visit to Amman today is interesting. It looks like Bush is going to push Maliki for his (Maliki's) strategy for controlling the violence. If Bush doesn't have a strategy, why should Maliki have one?
The question now is when--not if--the Bushies are going to throw Maliki under the bus. The Hadley memo, leaked recently, suggests that that is coming soon. ("Maliki, you're on notice.")
But it's hard to believe that anyone else can get this situation under control. So throw Maliki under the bus, and replace him with . . . ? But canning Maliki would change the news coverage, at least for 24 hours. ("Strong leadership.")
posted by Number Three @ 6:53 AM
2 Comments:
I had contemplated writing a similar post, but I was too busy and now you beat me to it. It really is unconscionable that it has taken the mainstream media (MSM) so long to state the obvious. The Iraqi Civil War, as future historians will undoubtedly dub it, started within two months after the Iraqis allegedly took over the government ministries in the summer of 2004. Since then, about 90% of the violence has always been Sunni on Shia and has been at level worthy of being called a Civil War (as Frances pointed out in an earlier post, it is no different than Lebanon’s Civil War). The other 10% or so of the violence was insurgency (Sunni & Shia against US) and terrorism (Al Qaeda against US and Shia). That the MSM could, for two frickin’ years now, concentrate their story frame on that meager 10% and ignore the other 90% and then suddenly make the jump to reality in one weekend is mind-boggling (to be fair, the LA Times started to flirt with the Civil War angle about a month ago, and they are due more credit than NBC). Of course we shouldn't be surprised that the MSM in our country have taken so long to call the Iraqi Civil War a civil war - it took them about a year to start calling the insurgency an insurgency. At this rate, if the Green Zone should be overrun, what will they call that for a couple of years – a "forced tactical retreat"?
There's a reason why NBC made the change, which #3 hints at: the Dem takeover of Congress. Now that the anti-Iraq War view has been validated at the polls, giving it an institutional voice in DC, the institutionalist MSM can justify itself in switching gears. Their "definitions" of reality are always geared more to reflecting established power than practical circumstances, and what changed NOW was the former.
So this newfound terminological clarity has to be chalked up as the second major accomplishment of the new Dem Congress, with Rummy's departure as the first.
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