Pacific Views

Civil Stupidity

The Boston Herald editorial staff asks a piercing and insightful question about the discovery of Iraq's civil war by the American press, emphasis in first paragraph mine:

... The CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, insists “the Iranian hand is stoking violence” in Iraq. Does that fit the classic definition of a “civil war”?

But words, especially those used by the major media, have consequences. After all, if this is merely a civil war, then it’s natural to ask what American troops are doing in the middle of it.

With its announcement NBC stepped out of the role of being an objective reporter of the news and into the role of overtly trying to shape the news. This isn’t Vietnam. If only it were that simple. And in trying to make it so, NBC does its viewers a grave disservice.

There are two options here: Either the pH of this editorial's idiocy approaches 1, or the Boston Herald editorial staff have discovered a definition of civil war that excludes the majority of the internecine conflicts raging in the world today.

By their definition, which excludes as 'classic' civil wars any conflict in which a foreign power is backing one of the sides ... Sudan must be excluded from being called a civil war because the Arab militias and the government are getting aid variously from China and other Arab nations to commit genocide against the people of Darfur. Sri Lanka must be excluded because the government is getting foreign aid from the US and other nations to continue their fight against the Tamil rebels. The fighting in Nepal must be excluded from the definition because China is backing the communist rebels. The Nicaraguan conflict can't be regarded as a civil war because the US was funding the Contras against the Sandinistas. Iraq would by definition have been excluded long ago because the US is funding and supporting their current government, which counts as foreign involvement unless Iraq has become a 51st state without anyone having been notified.

Finally, the Vietnam war cited by the editors at the end of their piece has to be left out of the civil war club because the Soviets and China were funding the Viet Cong, while the government was being supported by the US.

So maybe they should have handed this one over to the copy room staff. Someone who hasn't been mainlining the Beltway KoolAid might have spotted this egregious logical error before they demonstrated their objective density.