What is important about this development is that, for the first time since the debate about Iraq began, some--though certainly not all--major media outlets in the United States are making their own judgments based on developments in the Middle East. Up until now, major media has, with few exceptions, failed to embrace that most basic of journalistic responsibilities. Rather, it has served as a stenography service for the Bush-Cheney administration.
The Washington press corps has imbibed the assessments, the claims, the lies of the White House and then regurgitated them as "news." In so doing, they have warped not just the language but the very essence of the national debate. Meaningless phrases such as "stay the course" and "cut and run" have become mainstays of a discussion that has been stage-managed by White House political czar Karl Rove and his acolytes, as opposed to the news editors who are supposed to be calling the shots for broadcast and cable networks and newspapers.
Major media's on-bended-knee approach to the White House has forestalled an honest dialogue about the crisis into which Iraq degenerated after the U.S. invasion and occupation of that country.
Now that even Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has used the term, 'civil war' is beginning to be the consensus.
But why has the Bush administration fought so hard against the use of the term? Probably because it removes one of the arguments for staying in Iraq. That's the argument that if we withdraw from Iraq, the result will be civil war. If it's already in civil war, the argument is rendered ridiculous.
So Iraq can't be in civil war -- and, for the Bush administration, it never will be. They could dress up in blue and gray, fight with cannons, rifles, and horses, eat hardscrabble, play the harmonica around campfires, write soulful letters home, and Bush still would say it doesn't look like a civil war to him.
There are a lot of reasons why Bush thinks he can't withdraw. Most are political, but a big part is that his administration has a streak of stubborn idiocy and unfounded faith in their own genius. Rumsfeld, who's thankfully gone, once told Ken Adelman, "...we can only lose the war in America, that we can’t lose it in Iraq." Adelman said that this showed that Rummie was "in deep denial—deep, deep denial."
These people don't seem to have much appreciation of reality. Hell, they don't seem to even have much use for it. They have a narrative arc going on in their head where they start a war in Iraq and they're all Churchill, Lincoln, Tsun Tsu, and Superman rolled into one Great American Team of Heroic Geniuses by the time the credits roll. It's not a national story, it's a personal one. They are the worldbuilding visionaries and we -- americans, iraqis, british, polish, and whoever else gets in the way -- are just extras, the red shirts in the Star Trek episode who's only purpose is to die to advance the heroes' story.
So Iraq will never be in civil war until they figure out how it fits into the story.
Tags: news politics Iraq war disaster Bush Rumsfeld neocon
