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Ralph Peters is a regular columnist with the New
York Post.
Register here for access to the Post's Online Edition.
 Not
Even Close
An Iraqi civil war?...
[Ralph
Peters] 3/27/06
If
surgeons wielded scalpels as carelessly as to day's journalists
misuse language, the mortality rate in our hospitals would
soar. The latest example of this deadly abuse of terminology
was the media's declaration of "civil war" in Iraq.
It was the
equivalent of describing vandalism as genocide. The blaze faded,
only to be reignited briefly by former Iraqi Prime Minister
Ayad Allawi's statement last weekend that Iraq was in a civil
war - a claim he swiftly retracted, to the disappointment of
anchormen and -women everywhere.
Allawi wants
to be prime minister again - although his country's voters
rejected him - and he was playing the fear card. It backfired:
Iraqi leaders from virtually every faction denounced his claim,
and the former PM, once seen as a muscular leader, was outed
as just another political hack.
Contributors
Ralph Peters - Contributor
Ralph
Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books,
as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both
under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist
for the New York Post and other publications. [go to Peters Index] |
Nonetheless,
the next time Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Islamist Klansmen bomb
a religious site, we'll hear yet again that Iraq's really,
really in a civil war this time (cross our little hearts and
hope for headlines).
Perhaps it's
time to consider what a civil war actually is.
I'd define
it as a broad internal conflict between at least two contending
governments, each of which has the overt support of a substantial
portion of the population and each of which fields organized
(if not always professional) military forces.
Such a definition
doesn't draw crisp boundaries, since civil wars come in a range
of varieties (sometimes the fielded military forces are just
huge mobs), but the elasticity isn't infinite. Terrorism, even
at its extreme, is not the same thing as civil war. And an
insurgency only becomes a civil war when it offers an alternative
system of government sustained by a people in arms.
But the difference
is, above all, one of scope. Before we declare the next series
of Islamist mob hits a civil war, let's consider the scale
of a few real ones:
- In our
own Civil War, over 600,000 Americans died in four years.
- In the
brutal Spanish Civil War, hundreds of thousands died fighting,
while an unknown number of others perished as a result of
the struggle's general effects.
- During
the Chinese civil war, tens of millions died - exact figures
will never be known.
- Millions
died as a result of the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars.
- How many
millions died in the Russian civil war will never be known.
- The last
decade's interrelated civil wars in the former Yugoslavia
killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions.
- The series
of African civil wars sparked by the genocide in Rwanda and
spilling into Congo/Zaire and the Great Lakes region killed
3 million to 4 million - while the Clinton administration
whistled past the graveyard.
- Other
African civil wars, from Biafra, Angola and Mozambique through
Sierra Leone and Liberia to Sudan and Ivory Coast, killed
at least 10 million - indeed, it would be hard to find a
better vantage point from which to ponder the effects of
real civil wars than the tragic African continent.
Does any
of this really sound like Iraq? Only Saddam's attempted genocide
against the Kurds and the Shi'a Marsh Arabs came anywhere close.
As this column
long has maintained, civil war is one of the many possible
futures Iraq could face. But you'll know it, if you ever see
it. Meanwhile, hysterical claims only play into the hands of
terrorists and thugs who crave an Iraqi civil war almost as
badly as Donald Trump craves publicity.
On Thursday,
33 more Iraqis were killed by car bombs, but there was good
news, too: U.S. and British special-operations forces freed
three "peace worker" hostages - now the lucky activists
can get back to criticizing the brave men who just saved their
sorry backsides.
Baghdad isn't
Gettysburg. -ONE-
Ralph Peters'
latest book is New
Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy
This
piece first appeared in the New York Post
copyright 2006 - NY Post
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