Of Course Its A Civil War - Road to the Middle Class

IN THE WAKE of the bombing of the Shia temple in Samarra, the MSM is polling the American people and discovering that an “overwhelming majority of Americans believe that fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war,” according to a Washington Post-ABC poll.

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are outraged. To him, it’s all about the MSM pushing their “action line” that the war in Iraq is a mistake and we are losing, and Bush should be impeached. So the MSM is saying:

”We're the ones that want the civil war! We've been hoping for it for three years. We're hyping it, and now we got 80% of Americans thinking it's going to happen.”

Come on Rush. Of course there’s a civil war in Iraq. Has been ever since our forces drove into Baghdad in 2003 and the Saddam regime suddenly disappeared and went underground.

But because of the power of the United States the Saddamite and Al Qaeda factions cannot conduct an open civil war with armies marching to and fro across Iraq. They would if they could, but they do not have the power to execute a conquer and hold strategy. Instead, they must use the raiding strategy of IEDs and suicide bombs and work on the international left-wing media to declare a disaster.

Our strategy is to build up a new regime in Iraq that will have legitimacy, in the sense used by Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics, and will have an army and police force strong enough in operational and moral capability to put down an outbreak of frank civil war. It would have the power to prevent any armed group, army or militia, from coming out of hiding and converting from a raiding strategy to conquer-and-hold.

Actually, when you think about it, there will, eventually, be an attempt to convert the current insurgency to frank civil war. It will come when we draw down our forces. Our strategy is that when that happens, the Iraqi government security forces will be strong enough to put the insurgents down and score decisive victory in the ongoing Iraq Civil War.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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