Is It Civil War Yet - Road to the Middle Class

HERE AT Road to the Middle Class we have said: Of course there is civil war in Iraq. There are parties contending for power, parties that mobilized for war after the collapse of the Saddam regime. What else are you going to call it?

But Ralph Peters in The New York Post says no. You want civil war, he writes, try this definition:

I'd define it as a broad internal conflict between at least two contending governments, each of which has the overt support of a substantial portion of the population and each of which fields organized (if not always professional) military forces.

Indeed, the strategy of the terrorists in Iraq is to provoke a general civil war in which the Iraqis are mobilized into general conflict their entho-religious parties: Shia, Sunni, and Kurd.

Clearly, general civil war hasn�t happened, not yet. But it might, and the parties have been building militias just in case.

Meanwhile there is a great civil conflict in Iraq, and our western media isn�t doing anything to help, as White House reporter Helen Thomas this week seemed determined to prove.

The MSM and the Democrats need to be careful here. The president says, as he did in response to Helen Thomas�s question on Monday asking him why he went to war in Iraq when �Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true.�

I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

You can tell that he invited Helen Thomas to make her question so that he could wrap himself in the flag as the protector of the American people.

Liberals like to sneer about the president wrapping himself in the flag. They are wrong. The president�s job is first and foremost to protect the American people from enemies foreign and domestic. All the other stuff, the pensions, the rights, the programs, the promises, all that is mere bagatelle.

So when the president says that his entire effort is to protect the American people, you�d better be sure of your facts before you call him a liar. That is why Bush carefully, and politely makes sure to call Helen Thomas on her accusation.

I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that, you know, I didn�t want war. To assume I wanted war is just -- is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

All that stuff about �due respect� and �lifelong journalist� is gentlemenly politeness, packaging around the basic message: You are flat wrong.

The problem is that our news media and our educated elite just don�t get it. Not on the war, not on the economy, not on the social issues, not on the war on terror, and certainly not on civil war in Iraq.

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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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