Austin Bay Blog

As I’ve noted several times, I think the Iraqi civil war began in the late summer of 2003, when members of Saddam’s old ruling clique organized to regain power. The KKK did the same thing after the Civil War. (In fact, the KKK is a rough analog to both the Saddmists and Al Qaeda — ancien regime resistance combined with a violent, heretical religious vision. That’s been noted by many observers.)

Read Ralph’s latest, via the NY Post.

He’s looking for the sectarian civil war and says he can’t find it. The Shia-Sunni war has been going on for centuries, often used by Sunni and Shia potentates as a means of rallying secular political support. (Shia potentates? Read Iran. Of course, many Iranians may still be Zorastrians, but that’s a different discussion.)

The lede:

I’M trying. I’ve been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I’m looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can’t find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view’s clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn’t give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn’t stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Peters says this is what he’ll recall of his trip through Baghdad:

I’ll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week’s disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime.

Oh, and I’ll remember those “radical Shias” cheering our patrol as we passed by.

This is very much in line with what I saw when I served in Iraq through the summer of 2004, and what I saw when I returned as a writer in June 2005.

While we’re at it, read Mark Steyn on the quagmire — the one here in the States.

Key graf:

My worry is that on the home front the war is falling prey to lack-of-mission creep — that, in the absence of any real urgency and direction, the “long war” (to use the administration’s new and unsatisfactory term) is degenerating into nothing but bureaucratic tedium, media doom-mongering and erratic ad hoc oppositionism. To be sure, all these have been present since Day One: The press have been insisting Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war for three years and yet, despite the urgings of CNN and the BBC, those layabout Iraqis stubbornly refuse to get on with it. They’re happy to teeter for another three years, no matter how many “experts” stamp their foot and pout their lips and say “I want my civil war now.” The New York Times ran a headline after the big bombing: “More Clashes Shake Iraq; Political Talks Are In Ruins.” The “political talks” resumed the day after publication. The “ruins” were rebuilt after 48 hours.

The quagmire isn’t in Iraq but at home. For five years, beginning with the designation of “war on terror,” the president’s public presentation has been consistent: Islam is a great religion, religion of peace, marvelous stuff, White House Ramadan Banquet the highlight of the calendar, but, sadly, every barrel has one or two bad apples, even Islam believe it or not, and once we’ve hunted those down we’ll join the newly liberated peace-loving Muslim democracies in a global alliance of peace-loving peaceful persons…