NBC will now refer to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," joining a growing number of US media enterprises in designating the war as such despite President Bush's statements against the label.
The Boston Globe reports that the host of NBC's Today Show, Matt Lauer, said the network would buck the White House and from now on refer to the violence in Iraq as a "civil war." Media specialists are comparing it to the moment when former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite declared in 1968 that America was losing the war in Vietnam, and Ted Koppel's updates of the Iranian hostage crisis that "infuriated Jimmy Carter's White House."
"How you frame a problem frames what the public thinks is the right thing to do," said James Steinberg , dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. "If Iraq is a democracy struggling against insurgents and you describe it that way, people might still support you. If it is a civil war, it is indisputably the case that Americans will say, 'What are we doing in the middle of a civil war?'"
Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser under President Clinton, added: "The more they hear 'civil war,' the harder it is going to be to support a strategy that keeps a lot of American troops there in large numbers."
 |
|
|
|
|
Subscribe via RSS Feed:
    |
The Globe also notes that other media sources have referred to the conflict as a civil war, including the Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, and The Christian Science Monitor. [Editor's note: Marshall Ingwerson, managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor, commented on the use of the term "civil war," saying, "We've often quoted people describing the fighting in Iraq as a civil war. But we have so far put qualifiers in front of the term when we use it ourselves, as a way of acknowledging that it's still a fuzzy judgment call, not a clearcut, yes-or-no definition."]
The Washington Post reports that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says Iraq is not in a civil war situation, but it is very close to one, while Saudi Arabia is so worried about what is happening in Iraq that it "basically summoned" Vice President Dick Cheney for talks over the weekend.
Editor & Publisher reports that in an appearance on the CNN show Reliable Sources, CNN's Iraq correspondent John Roberts said the situation there is far worse than the media has shown it to be.
The place is a mess. It's an absolute mess. There is nowhere you can go in the Baghdad area as a Western journalist without an escort, where you could feel safe from being kidnapped, shot at, whatever. The amount of death that's on the streets of Baghdad for US forces and for the Iraqi people is at an astronomical level ...
Because television can't – and even print – can't fully capture the scope of what's going on in Iraq. And to some degree, too, over the last three-and-a-half years, it's become the daily traffic report, the daily drumbeat.
The Associated Press reports that Mr. Bush still says that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war. Rather, he says, it is actually part of an Al Qaeda plot to "use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other." He made the comments at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
Bush, who travels to Jordan later in the week for a summit with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the latest cycle of violence does not represent a new era in Iraq. The country is reeling from the deadliest week of sectarian fighting since the war began in March 2003.
"We've been in this phase for a while," Bush said.
But the president's remarks were at odds with those of national security advisor Stephen Hadley who, AP reports, said that Iraq is in a "new phase characterized by an increase in sectarian violence" that does require change.
"Obviously everyone would agree things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough," Mr. Hadley had told reporters on the flight to Estonia. Hadley also said he did not believe that Iraq had fallen into civil war, even if it had entered this new phase.
Agence France-Presse reports, however, that in Baghdad itself, residents don't really care much about the argument of what to call the violence in their city.
For Iraqis the semantic question over whether the fighting meets the criteria of full scale warfare – a dispute revived this week by the decision of some media outlets to adopt the term – misses the point.
"If we wake up every morning to hear that 40 to 60 bodies have turned up here and there in Baghdad, civil war cannot be any different," said Damis Abdullah, a Sunni Arab woman working in the culture ministry.
Nevertheless, most Iraqis who spoke to AFP on Tuesday said that while they feared new horrors lying in wait for their shattered country, civil war has not yet begun in earnest. They accused Iraq's political leadership pushing a sectarian agenda that can only lead to more intense conflict between the armed Sunni and Shiite factions launching mortar barrages and bomb attacks in the divided capital.
- President must face evidence of civil war (Hartford Courant)
- noble, necessary and winnable war (World Daily Net)
- Get Iraq's civil war over with (Yahoo! News)
Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan.
RSS feed
