A debate is underway about the worsening violence in Iraq. Has the country descended to civil war, with attacks carried out largely by Shiite militias and Sunni Muslim insurgency groups? Or are al-Qaeda fighters the primary cause of the violence, as President Bush has said?
A number of American news organizations have taken the measure of violence and have started using the term “civil war.”
It’s hard to think otherwise, though there is no doubt that the foreign fighters of al-Qaeda are taking part in the hostilities and acted to provoke the Iraqi factions by triggering the February bombing of the Shiite Muslim Golden Mosque in Samarra.
The carnage in the Sadr City area of Baghdad last Thursday prompted renewed fears of a full-blown civil war. At least 200 civilians were killed in a series of coordinated car bombs. November looks to become the deadliest for Iraqi civilians since the U.S. invasion in 2003. More than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October, according to the United Nations.
President Bush blames the violence on al- Qaeda extremists bent on disrupting the democratic process.
The debate coincides with key meetings in Jordan, Washington and Iran, where strategies for ending the violence in Iraq are under discussion. Bush is facing growing pressure to change course in Iraq. While Americans seem willing to tolerate the continuing deaths of U.S. service personnel in the name of building democracy, they won’t be so tolerant if U.S. forces are caught in the crossfire of a deadly and indefinite civil war.
Bush will be meeting today and tomorrow in Amman with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, and we hope their discussions yield positive results.
They should explore all options, though both men have already said that a withdrawal of U.S. forces would be premature. There are 150,000 deployed in Iraq today.
In Washington, the Iraq Study Group met again Tuesday to prepare a report that will include recommendations for a regional conference involving Iran and Syria. President Bush made the right call Tuesday in urging Iraq to talk with its neighbors. “Iranians and Syrians should help and not destabilize this young democracy,” he said. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani met Monday with Iranian’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who pledged help to “strengthen security in Iraq.”
It matters less how we label the violence than how it will be brought to an end. We hope the meetings in Jordan, Tehran and Washington will intensify efforts in that direction.
