According to this article, Jordan’s King Abdullah believes the Middle East might be on the verge of three civil wars: in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon. If true, then George Bush’s latest justification for invading Iraq — to bring peace, stability and democracy to the Middle East — looks like the latest in his long series of failures (capturing the 9/11 terrorists, finding WMDs in Iraq, reducing terrorist attacks, bringing peace to Iraq, etc.).
Further to my post, the Bushies are as eager to avoid the words "civil war" as they are to avoid the words "global warming" (see here), so Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, has begun saying that the conflict in Iraq "has entered 'a new phase' requiring changes." Don't you just love that ambiguity? "A new phase requiring changes" in Iraq is completely meaningless: it could cover anything from peace to nuclear annihilation. It must have come from the same propaganda writer who gave us Bush's "global climate change" in lieu of "global warming." It lets them talk about the problem without actually acknowledging that it exists.
There isn't any reason for W to attempt to bring stability to Iraq as long as he continues to believe that there's no instability to remedy. Heck of a job, W!
I saw on the news today that Bush *still* doesn't believe there is a civil war in Iraq. Amazingly (or perhaps not, given his cognitive dissonance), he blames the violence on al Qaeda terrorists, a claim we hear from *no one* outside the White House. Indeed, France, Italy and even Bush's dear ally Britain have all said they will pull their troops out of Iraq next year, so obviously none of them believes Bush's delusion that Iraq is the "front line of the war on terror." With Iraqis daily slaughtering each other by the hundreds, with bombs, rockets, machine guns and other heavy weapons, I wonder what Bush would consider to be a civil war. It's obviously a war, and it obviously involves a lot of dead civilians.
I have noticed, however, that we no longer see Bush swaggering around with any "Bring 'em on" rhetoric. Instead, we see him making the circuit of European countries to ask for help, as if any of them are likely to do so. Most experts say the situation is now a diplomatic problem, not a military one, so they say help needs to come from Iraq's neighbors. By soliciting help from Europe, Bush shows that he still sees the situation as a military problem, which isn't good for either our troops or the Iraqis.