At least one major national newspaper is starting to call the violence in Iraq what it has been for too long: a civil war.
Here is the lead from this morning’s LA Times story:
Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before. A main Shiite political faction threatened to quit the government, a move that probably would cause its collapse and plunge the nation deeper into disarray.
By way of contrast, this is what The New York Times offers:
Defying a government curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in Baghdad and a nearby city on Friday, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for the devastating bombings that killed more than 200 people the day before in the capital’s largest Shiite district, residents and police officials said.
Militia fighters drove through neighborhoods in Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, firing at mosques with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades on the Muslim day of prayer.
The vengeance attacks unfolded while lawmakers loyal to the virulently anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr threatened to boycott the government if Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki met with President Bush next week in Jordan. Mr. Sadr controls one of the biggest blocs of seats in Parliament, and on Friday he reiterated his claim that the American presence was the root cause of the rising violence in Iraq.
The Washington Post comes closer, but refuses to acknowledge that we have entered the abyss:
In a wave of reprisal killings, Shiite militiamen attacked Sunni mosques in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq on Friday, defying a government curfew and propelling the country further toward full-blown civil war.
Why this is the case is difficult to understand. The internecine violence has been a chief characteristic of the war for a long time now, and it seems naive to pretend that this kind of factional brutality is something other less than civil war.
I think the American people, who have shown by their November vote that they want a change of course in Iraq and in the United States, understand what they are witnessing from afar.
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Hank Kalet 