Blogoland

This is interesting:

Nobody knows what the future will bring for Iraq. In my opinion, it’s already in a civil war, though many people seem afraid to say it. Actually, the reluctance is more likely ordinal in nature–-no one wants to be the first to say what many know to be true. Many now-stable democracies have suffered civil wars.

Democracy, despite its inherent nobility, is seldom easy or pretty. At its best, democracy is a reflection of the “people,” and we all know what “they” are like. - (Mission Impossible, Mission Accomplished 23 February 2005)

I wrote those words more than one year ago. Hatred that has been pressurized is a potent and malevolent fuel. Although I’d been in Iraq for just two months, I’d seen enough to know it was too late to talk about hiding the matches—a fire had broken out. The tangled briars of tribal enmities had overgrown, dense from decades of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal death squads. Wrenching that dictatorship changed the political landscape and in the process pumped fresh air into a smoldering fire.

Throughout 2005, I said in writing, on the radio and television that Iraq is in a state of Civil War. It had been in that state for decades. I’d point to all the kindling heaped around the country and point to the smoke on the horizon, but most people politely dismissed the warnings. Now the fire is bigger. Listen. Listen! Iraq is in a state of Civil War. Much bigger than it was a year ago, and next year it will be bigger still, if we do not recognize that there is a FIRE!

There is no reason why Iraq and its proud people cannot make it. There is nothing written in any holy scripture – so far as I know – that says Iraq cannot make it. Iraq can, but will it? Not if we don’t stop quibbling over definitions and just come to grips that the fire is growing. This is not a fire we can afford to leave to natural forces. Not in that tinderbox we call the Middle East.

This is from a man who has reported directly from Iraq for several years. He is a favorite of the right-wingosphere, who have lauded him for his big-picture context. What will Fred Barnes and Ralph Peters say?