This morning, I read this:
President Bush and Vice President Cheney hailed the progress being made by Iraqi leaders to form a unity government yesterday, as the administration tried to dispel a growing perception that a continuing wave of sectarian violence has pushed Iraq into a full-fledged civil war.
And I thought, well, who gets to decide whether it’s a civil war? Is there an international ranking system, like the Richter scale? Is this yet another authority our President for Life has claimed for himself?
I used to have this editor who was a rather extreme drunk. He’d show up at the office in the late aftermoon, reeking of booze and wearing the same clothes he’d slept in. He’d make appointments with people and never show up. (We used to have a pool going as to what time he’d actually stumble into the office. I remember I won $40 once when he showed up after 4 p.m.)
Anyway, the man knew we didn’t respect him, and so he’d try to assert his authority with a lot of absurd nit-picking. I remember one time there was a tornado that blew across three counties, leaving a trail of downed trees, power lines and buildings in its path. I mean, plenty of people (including me) saw the funnel cloud, county authorities were on TV talking about the tornado and there was a trail of downed trees several miles long. But he refused to let me call it a tornado “because the Weather Service hasn’t sent investigators yet to confirm it. It could be wind shear. We can’t make a ruling that it was a tornado. It would affect our credibility.”
“So how do you want me to write this lede?” I finally said. “‘It’s A Windy Day In The County’?”
I was pissed. Sometimes you just know a tornado - or a civil war - when you see one.
Maybe it’s not really a civil war at all but a war of northern aggression.
I regret to inform you that the International Body for the Certification of Civil Wars had only one meeting, albeit a very lively one.
There were no survivors.
War Between the Sects.
In academia, it turns out that there is a commonly accepted threshold for “civil war” - 1,000 deaths in battle. I would imagine that threshold was passed a while back?
Here’s an interesting paper that references the 1,000 total deaths and makes some recommendations.
Of course, where some see civil war, some see revolution.