A Civil Question

President Bush won't talk about the prospect of civil war in Iraq and what it would mean to the U.S. troop presence. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he needs to.

Prompted by a new Washington Post/ABC News poll showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war, I wrote in yesterday's column about how Bush waved off any talk of civil war in his interview last week with ABC News's Elizabeth Vargas .

But it seems like everyone else is talking about it but him -- even his top envoy to Iraq.

Borzou Daragahi writes in the Los Angeles Times: "In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the 'potential is there' for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

" 'We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?' Khalilzad said. 'The way forward, in my view, is an effort to build bridges across [Iraq's] communities.' . . .

"Khalilzad said the U.S. has little choice but to maintain a strong presence in Iraq -- or risk a regional conflict in which Arabs side with Sunnis and Iranians back Shiites, in what could be a more encompassing version of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, which left more than 1 million dead.

"The ambassador warned of a calamitous disruption in the production and transport of energy supplies in the Persian Gulf. He described a worst-case scenario in which religious extremists could take over sections of Iraq and begin to expand outward.

" 'That would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play.' "

Mariam Karouny writes for Reuters: "After two weeks teetering toward sectarian civil war, Iraq is seeing something of a lull.

"Yet behind upbeat rhetoric that the crisis is over and a national unity coalition is in the works, Iraqi leaders are talking ever more gloomily in private about the country breaking apart. . . .

"A senior Shi'ite politician close to the interim government said talk of an impending civil war was misplaced. 'It depends what you mean by civil war,' he said. 'But as far as I can see we are already in an undeclared civil war.' "

Indeed, the idea that Iraq is already in a state of civil war is taking on more and more credence.

Jake Tapper reported for ABC News on Sunday: "As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

" 'We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in,' said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 'The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.' . . .

"Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, 'If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004.' "

Larry Diamond , the Stanford University scholar who briefly advised U.S. authorities in Iraq, writes in the New Republic: "Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. Indeed, by one common social science definition -- at least 1,000 dead (with at least 100 on each side) from internal hostilities in which one side tries violently to change the state or its policies -- Iraq's civil war began in the first year of the 'postwar' era and has been particularly bloody."

Paul Starobin wrote in a National Journal cover story in December: "An active, if not full-boil, civil war is already a reality. The principal combatants are drawn from the Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab communities, which together comprise about three-quarters of the Iraqi population of 26 million. In this picture, U.S.-led coalition forces tend to be viewed by 'rejectionist' Sunni Arabs as protectors of the Shiites, who dominate the new, U.S.-backed, Iraqi government and who operate militias with close ties to the new Iraqi regime."

And General William E. Odom , former director of the National Security Agency, wrote for NiemanWatchdog.org back in August: "Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can't prevent a civil war by staying."

So what to do?

Thomas Beaumont writes in the Des Moines Register: "Sen. Tom Harkin said in Iowa Friday that Iraq has deteriorated into 'civil war,' declaring it no longer manageable by U.S. forces. . . .

"The senator, an opponent of the war, said the only solution to the surge of sectarian violence is to begin withdrawing U.S. forces."

By contrast, Diamond writes: "This is not a time for the United States to throw in the towel in Iraq. The consequences of all-out civil war -- which would now surely follow a precipitous U.S. withdrawal -- would be too disastrous for everyone except the extremists."

Damned if you do, damned if you don't -- that's not an enviable state of affairs for a commander in chief. Is Bush reassessing his plan? Does he have a contingency plan? Hasn't he learned the hard way that it's worth preparing for the worst?
Wapo