The civil war that isn't
Elements of the MSM seem to await a civil war in Iraq with the same breathlessness that Marxists used to await the final crisis of capitalism. Each significant instance of violence between Sunni and Shia is viewed either as evidence that the civil war has started or is just around the corner. Last week's conflagration appears to have been just another false alarm. The Australian reports that "the movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, alleged to have played a role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, publicly made peace with political and religious Sunni leaders overnight." In addition, "Salam al-Maliki, a cabinet minister allied to Sadr, and Iyad al-Sammaraie of the Sunni Islamic Party proclaimed their own reconciliation at a joint press conference, aired on Iraqi state television."
Elements of the MSM make these two claims about the Bush administration -- that it failed to anticipate the very real prospect of a civil war in Iraq and that it has been incompetent in its management of post-invasion affairs. But there's a tension between these claims. If a civil war was likely, then the fact that we don't have one at this point (by any intelligent definition of the term) suggests that the administration has dealt skillfully with the politics of post-invasion Iraq.
