Obviously, a civil war in Iraq is going to be different from our own version. First of all, under Hussein, the populace was virtually disarmed except for Saddam's carefully controlled military and police. During our Civil War, our country was not under the military occupation of a more powerful country at the time we split into factions. At the time hostilities broke out between the North and the South, both sides already had a full-fledged army or at least it quickly built with the rapid influx of already armed citizenry. This certainly isn't going to be the case in Iraq although it could certainly build towards that if fed by outside influences.

In many ways, we're equipping those armies for the future conflict by creating the new Iraqi police and militia. If these smaller skirmishes widen the divide between the sects, all of a sudden these military units we're supplying with training and arms break apart into their own and then you have actual armies fighting one another. I guess it's at that point that the conflict becomes a true civil war.

What I'd caution against though is minimizing the danger of the situation based on the symantics involved. No matter what it's called, it certainly has all the characteristics of the precursor of an all-out civil war.

I really don't see a smooth way out of this situation. It'd be tempting to say simply disarm the entire region, sit at the borders and don't let any person or any arms into the country, and let them duke it out low tech. The problem with that is the country's simply too big to find all the weapons already in the hands of "insurgents" and pulling out is going to give those armed thugs immense power. Maybe it's inevitable. Obviously what we're doing now is not working though. Time to declare victory and come home? The troops now seem to think that way.

Art