I'm back, sorry for the long absence, again. As I mentioned earlier, I needed a new kidney, and thanks to my brother, and my whole family, and a team of doctors and nurses, I had a successful kidney transplant on August 25th. It took me awhile to completely recover, but finally, I can now return to annoying people with my opinions on the world today.
A lot has happened since my last post, too much to comment on, so I'll try to hit the ground running and write about the most current issues. Obviously, the biggest topic in the news right now, is Iraq. The Baker report was just released, and Robert Gates was just confirmed as the new Secretary of Defense. Hopefully these two events will mark a new direction in our policy in Iraq, or even better, a change in the situation over there.
One of the biggest issues in the blogesphere these days is the situation in Iraq and what to call it. Many on the fringe right are trying to convince people that it should not be called a civil war. The reason for this is obvious. Right now, our Military is set up to fight an insurgency, not a civil war. If you call what is going on in Iraq a civil war, you must admit that the present course the Bush administration is taking, is wrong, and must be changed. So, the defenders of the Bush administration must make sure that the situation in Iraq is not called a civil war, or else they would be forced to criticize the President.
If you study their arguments, you will see that they fall into two categories. One group that claims that there is absolutely nothing even resembling a civil war in Iraq, (we'll call them the radical Bush fundamentalists), and another group that argues that the situation in Iraq is too complicated to be called a civil war. The first group is easy to debunk. Just look at the facts. The second group is even easier to debunk. If the situation in Iraq is too complicated to be called a civil war, that doesn't mean that it is not in a civil war, but just that the situation has other elements as well. This group is correct in claiming that the situation in Iraq is too complicated to be called just one thing, but one of the many things it can be called is a civil war, along with an insurgency, and a holy war, and sectarian violence...
So by arguing that Iraq is too complicated to be labeled by just one label, not only does this group really admit that Iraq is in a civil war, but they are arguing that the situation is worse than a civil war. And if that is the case, then the Bush administration really needs to change its Iraq policy.
Now all of this really is meaningless, because it really doesn't matter what you call the situation in Iraq...call it an insurgency, call it sectarian violence, call it chopped liver. Whatever you call it doesn't change the facts that are on the ground, that Iraqi citizens are killing each other every day in obscene numbers. Whatever you call that, it means that the Bush policies have failed and need to be changed.