why is everyone calling it a civil war?

[meow mix]

the shiites are now helping to fight against coalition.

when someone calls that civil war..
it sounds like bush-talk to me! i dont get it.

[Walt Starr]

1. It's not a civil war

It's a general insurrection.

Gotta hand it to Bush, though. He's definitely a "Uniter".

Nobody else in history has been able to so unite the Iraqi Shiites with the Sunnis and Kurds.

[corporatewhore]

2. why is everybody calling it an occupation when clearly it is

The White Mans Burden a just and noble call of duty

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

13. Please explain yourself

Because your post sounds exceptionally racist.

[corporatewhore]

14. have you ever read White Mans Burden by kipling

where he talks about how it is the duty of the colonialists to "civilize" "savagave nations"

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

15. Of course I've heard of it

I still think it's a bullshit and offensive term to use. Blanket statements, no matter who they attack, are ignorant and offensive.

[corporatewhore]

16. heres the text i just thought the sound of the colonials in DC

and occupation apologists meme of we have to stay there because iraqis are not capable of constructive civilization if they had self determination and it is we westerners who know best reminded me of it
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. It's still racist in your context

Perhaps you need to more closely define your statements, because it still sounds like you're saying all white people want to do is wage war on "savage" countries, which is quite offensive and bigoted.

[corporatewhore]

19. i spefically said colonials in DC (including powell) and

occupation apologists (notice i didnt say white occupation apologists) take it up with mr.kipling he wrote the damn poem and btw he was very white

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

20. No where in your post do you qualify it.

why is everybody calling it an occupation when clearly it is

The White Mans Burden a just and noble call of duty


That is the text of your quote. Further, I could cite Mein Kampf or the KKK Field Manual, but I'd still be racist for doing so unless I took the proper care.

[corporatewhore]

21. i meant to imply western colonialism as charactarized by the poem

"white mans burden" oh by the way do you have a problem with michael moore and his book stupid white men

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

22. Does it matter what I think about "Stupid White Men"?

I think your post was racist. Period. What I do or do not think about someone else's book is not at issue here and your post stands on its own irrespective of that. If you're "implying" something, you had better damn well be clear about what you're implying. Where I'm standing, you're labeling all white men with the same ignorant stereotype.

[Bridget Burke]

23. It's a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

...a rather well-known British writer of poetry & prose who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He refused most of the other honors offered him--such as a knighthood & the Poet Laureateship.

"White Man's Burden" was written for the USA on the occasion of our winning the Spanish American War. It reflects his view of imperialism--as a duty, not a right. Certainly not something I can agree with, but a bit more honorable than the philosophy of the current crew in charge.

Kipling can be quite infuriating. Many of his political views were conservative in his day and have not aged well. But most of his writing transcends politics. He was born in India, spoke Hindi before English & had true appreciation of many aspects of other cultures. Along with his tales of soldiers & their women out in India, he wrote fantasy & science fiction. Some of his best works were written for children but loved by many adults.

Just to give you a bit of context. The poem was not invented to annoy you.

[corporatewhore]

24. Ughh i get enough of that bs from the right but yes i do like alotta

white guys like Dennis Kucinich Howard Zinn Michael Moore Greg Palast.I know a lotta white guy anti-globalization activists I have no beef with white men.but it just so happens that most of the people i do have serious beef with say George bush dick cheney happen to be whitemen. About the moore reference in his book he blames every bad thing that has happened from dropping the nuke to him getting fired was because of white men.Look it was just a reference to the same mentality of a poem written by a very white man btw yes maybe i did use it alittle for shock. Any way yes colonials have been including more people of color like colon powell. if you think i am just another white man hating latina then alert me

[meow mix]

25. as a white male, i agree with you

and dont find anything wrong with your statements.

i think some people like to pretend to be hypersensitive, for whatever motive.

well..
if they arent pretending - they must be blind.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

32. whatever

i'm tired of hearing justifications for one day.

[Djinn]

26. nope

citing Mein Kampf would NOT make you a racist - agreeing with it might.

Personally (maybe because I've read many of her/his posts) I didn't take corporatewhore's post they way you did

[Sterling]

31. Dude chill

She's got a freakin Cynthia McKinney avatar. I totally understood what seh said and was not offended at all. I really think you took it the wrong way.

[Joanne98]

30. Wow that's so cool

[Demeter]

3. Because it resonates with the Southerners

If you call it a Civil War, they think they can win this time.

It won't be a civil war until we are out of the picture, and they can sit there and pick each other off at their leisure and their own expense.

If we really wanted to win this war, we would evacuate all the women and any boy child under 12 (okay, call them hostages, but I doubt that they would bitch for very long, once they had food, water, electricity and security).

[Warpy]

4. it's an anticolonial war right now

It may degenerate into a civil war as the various factions fight for bigger pieces of the postwar governing pie in the power vacuum after the coalition leaves, but right now, it's not there. They're not exactly working together, but they're fighting the occupiers and collaborators instead of each other.

[Brotherjohn]

5. It's the Iraqi counter-attack to our initial invasion.

[seabeyond]

6. revolutionary war then

for independence and you are right they are uniting

[Flagg]

7. The word is 'intifada'

[leesa]

28. It's not an intifada. They are defending their country against invasion

They are at war with us because we invaded them.

[David__77]

8. I don't think there's a particular reason.

It's just a term people loosely apply to war in a nation. Vietnam was "civil war." Korea was "civil war." But the governments of south Vietnam and south Korea could not exist without US troops supporting it. But in Iraq any government that is called "sovereign" is most clearly not going to be. It is still an occupation after 7/1 rolls around, just with a facade--a very thin one--of "sovereignty."

[Minstrel Boy]

9. Thank you!

It is not a civil war. There has never been a civil war in Iraq.



Iraqis unite to condemn interim constitution
March 20, 2004

Thousands of Muslim Sunni and Shia gathered after Friday prayers in al-Adhamya and al-Kadhimya districts in Baghdad to demonstrate against the interim Iraqi constitution.

...

Demonstrators chanted "Yes to Iraq, no to sectarianism, no to US occupation", in an attempt to show the commitment to national unity among Iraq's various religions, sects, and ethnicities.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B90497BA-C408-4E65-8ED7-5301CBBF841A.htm

Sunnis and Shiites are not fighting each other. And it's positively Bushian to keep talking up civil war. It's the neoconservatives who want civil war. Who would benefit from it more than they? They're the ones beating the drums. Why? Because having conquered Iraq, they want an excuse to divide it. A divided, sectarian Iraq is easier to administer as puppet, vassal states, and it would ensure that Iraq would never again be an independent economic and military power.

Good to remember that, when the bombs blow up mosques and pilgrims, and neither Sunnis nor Shiites take credit nor appear keen to fan the sectarian flames. And think of the constitution the US has tried to impose, institutionalizing sectarian division. Iraqis do not want this!

The neoconservatives WANT Iraq to dissolve into chaos, so it can be carved into tribal vassal states. It's also a strategic goal of the Israeli right. Read Israeli journalist Oded Yinon, writing in 1982:

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.... Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria.... Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."
http://www.xymphora.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_xymphora_archive.html#1078
What looks to us like a disaster is, to the neo-conservative ideologue, a transitional stage to the redrawing of the map of the Middle East.

Robert Fisk, March 3: "All This Talk Of Civil War, And Now This.... Coincidence?"

Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.

Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.

...

I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.

...

We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5805.htm

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. The USA will keep on picking on "figureheads" to name as the problem

.
.
.

of all the unrest.

But, that is NOT the problem, a single person here and there.

Millions of Iraqis have had their relatives and friends massacred and wounded by this invasion. They have a permanent festering hatred for anything that even LOOKS like an American now.

Kill one figurehead, the people will rally behind the next one.

There IS only one solution, and most of us realize it.

Get the USA out.

Period.

[meow mix]

11. i wish more people would realize this..

ty.

[leftistagitator]

12. It will be a Civil war

This is an uprising from mainly the Shi'ite section of Iraq. When we leave they will exact revenge on the Sunnis and go back to killing the Kurds. None of these groups like each other and it was only a strongarm despot like Saddam that kept them from killing each other for so long. Which is why this particular group wants us gone so badly, so they can get to work setting up a Shi'ite theocracy just like in Iran. But, hey, at least the people will be "liberated".

[mmonk]

17. spin

[VOX]

27. "Civil war" goes down smoother than "quagmire," "mess" or "debacle."

Any Western presence, especially an American one, isn't welcome in that part of the world. The Iraqis want us OUT and gone.

[Joanne98]

29. It's not a civil war. They're jerking our chains.

The Sunni and the Shia are working together. Sunnis attack one day Shia protest the next. This is looking organized. They're telling the US they hate each other. BS They're just playing games on Centcom. I'll bet my life on the fact that this whole damn thing blows up this summer. It's probably been planned out for a year. Remember the Viet Cong. "We're so very very glad your here. Meet my son, shake his hand, BOOM. They hated us so much they blew up their kids to kill us. BUT they were friendly. The Sunni and the Shia may hate each other but they hate us more. The old divide and conquer routine won't work. DOD knows it they're just not telling us. What's new?