'Civil' Strife

It's official. Secretary of State Matt Lauer says Iraq is in a civil war.

Along with the rest of NBC News.

Actually, all the networks and major newspapers have been using terms like sliding into civil war, on the verge of civil war, and so on. The L.A. Times used the C.W. phrase on Saturday, without a public fuss. What I've been saying all along is that if this isn't a civil war, it's a pretty good imitation.

So Lauer and NBC deserve some credit, I suppose, for dropping the qualifiers, even though the semantic debate is basically a sideshow to the main act of sectarian violence that has been spiraling out of control for many months now. The way that MSNBC pounded the linguistic issue all day, though, seemed to carry a whiff of self-congratulation.

I have no problem with using the term civil war, not with more than 3,700 Iraqi civilians having been killed last month, according to a U.N. report. I also have no problem with the word mess. I do think you can dream up any name you want and you've still got a situation--for the U.S., for the Sunnis and Shiites, for the region and for the world--that is getting worse rather than better. And the leaked semi-conclusions of the Baker commission certainly don't sound like a magic bullet. Perhaps because there isn't one.

The move "reflects the news media's use of increasingly stark language to characterize the escalating violence gripping the country," says the LAT.

"NBC's decision, which came after a particularly deadly series of retaliatory attacks in Baghdad, makes it the first television network to officially adopt the term 'civil war,' a description the Bush administration has resisted.

"The Times was the first major news organization to formally adopt the description when it began to refer to the hostilities as a civil war in October, without public fanfare."

But, says the Boston Globe, "The White House, for its part, continued to maintain that the expanding cycle of sectarian warfare in Iraq -- on full and painful display over the weekend with the deadliest round of revenge killings between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunni minority -- does not yet amount to a civil war."

Marty Kaplan gives the "civil" news outlets a standing O:

"Now that NBC, Newsweek, CNN and the Los Angeles Times have decided that the civil war in Iraq should actually be called a civil war, the way is open for the MSM to call more things by their true names, rather than their Orwell names. What's the worst that could happen to the media -- Tony Snow has a hissy fit?

"Rove issues an access-fatwa?