Back when our debate over the war in Iraq was focused around whether or not we should use the phrase "civil war" to describe the situation there, I often found it helpful to take what was happening in Iraq and imagine what we would call it if it were happening here at home. 4 million people have been forced to flee their homes, entire cities have been effectively destroyed, armed militias fight on a daily basis in the streets of the nation's capitol, entire neighborhoods expelled from their homes and/or killed because of their religious affiliation. If any of that were happening in Washington, DC, I don't think we'd be arguing about semantics.
It's been a long while since we had such a pointless semantic debate, so long in fact that I'd thought the issue settled. Apparently not. Matt Yglesias:
General Petraeus just said that Iraq was "on the brink of civil war" eighteen months ago, from which brink it's now been brought back. Now it seems to me that if we'd had a large pitched battle in Chicago or Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, we would say that the United States was currently in a state of civil war.
This idea that the citizens of Iraq - the ones we supposedly are there to help - are not living in the midst of a civil war is utterly ridiculous. Take everything you know about the security situation in Iraq and imagine it happening in your home state. What would you call it?
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