Its name calling not analysis

Ralph Peters:

YOU can call her a blond, but she's still a redhead. The endless spitting match over whether Iraq is in a state of civil war is a media-driven grudge fight that ignores the complex reality. It's name-calling, not analysis.

A lot of this is just "get Bush" stuff from journalists whose biased reporting helped shape the dismal reality in Iraq and who now crow that they were right all along - the media as a self-licking ice-cream cone.

The good news - and, unfortunately, the bad news - is that Iraq is not in a state of civil war in the textbook sense. If it were, our military and political mission would be easier.

In a civil war, you have clearly defined sides struggling for political power, with organized military formations and parallel governments. You know who to kill and who is empowered to negotiate with you. You can pick a side and stick to it.

Unleashed, our military could smash any enemy in an open civil war. Even our diplomats would have trouble preventing an American victory.

But the violence in Iraq comes from overlapping groups of terrorists, militias, insurgents, death squads, gangsters, foreign agents and factionalized government security forces engaging in layers of savage religious, ethnic, political and economic struggles - with an all-too-human lust for revenge spicing the mix.

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As far as the now-pejorative term "civil war" goes, let's just let activists in or out of the media use it, if it helps them bear the dawning reality that, no, the Democrats in Congress aren't going to bring the troops home for Christmas and declare surrender.

Meanwhile, those of us who care about our country's security and who worry about the futility haunting the Middle East need to face a tougher issue than yo-mama name-calling: Iraq has deteriorated so badly it's hard to imagine a positive outcome unless we're willing to take radical, politically difficult measures.

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... Really taking on our enemies - not least Moqtada al-Sadr and his legion of thugs - would require us to defy the elected Baghdad government we sponsored. To kill those who need killing to pacify Iraq and re-establish our ascendancy would mean that we would again become an outright occupying power.

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The semantics war over Iraq is not as important as NBC and the rest of the media seem to think. The war is what it is what ever it is called. If it were a civil war it would be one of the most unique in history since none of the combatants who are killing non combatants are engaging the government forces in a contest for power. The government forces that are engaged with the enemy are doing so in very small scale because the enemy is too weak to mass forces necessary to win battles. He remains a very weak enemy.

The enemy, because of his weakness has adopted a chaos strategy in the vain hope that enough chaos will permit him to seize control. However, he has alienated both the Sunni and Shia in Iraq while at the same time provoking attacks on non combatants by both sides. The irony is that if he and the Democrats succeed in getting the US forces out, the Sunni he claims to be fighting for will be in a worse position. If the other Sunni neighbors came to their rescue would they install an al Qaeda government? No. At this point al Qaeda and the Saddamites remain a cockroach force making a mess but unable to take charge of the house.

It appears that for the time being the Sadrist will remain in limbo also. That will mean continued chaos but it remains a strategic defeat for al Qaeda. When you implement your strategy and still cannot control the situation, that is a strategic defeat. At this point Iraq is a loser for all the factions. It will only be a loser for the US if we leave.