The descend

I usually expect a publication such as the Guardian, and others which I regard highly to play the role of vanguard when it comes to groundbreaking political situations,or anything else for thatmatter. I have thus, been sorely dissappointed by the headline on today's issue on the Guardian, "Iraq descends towards civil war"

Descends? Come on, give me a break. Iraq is IN civil war, it has been for the past month. It could not be clearer to see. 160 people were killed last Thursday, in the single most deadly day for Iraqi civilians since the invasion in 2003. Its been 4 years folks, and the situation has gone from bad to worse. It can get much worse, yes, but that does not mean we have to sugar-coat the situation. This is war. Yeserday, in retaliation for Thursday's attacks (which were on Shia Muslims) Shias burned people in the street.

Civil war is not coming, it is here.

The Guardian usually does a better job than most newspapers in these situations, which is why I am perplexed as to why no one, absoluetly no one has as of yet pointed out that this is a situation we cannot handle, that it is out of hand, and that yes, it
is a civil war which will cause carnage and bloodshed of a scale we are not accustomed to. All opinion of such sort uptill now have been inundated with "maybe", "perhaps", "I think", "It seems" etc. Well, I know. I am telling you, this is civil war. And we can't do anything about it. The boulder has started to roll and while it was rumbling in its place, we were twiddling our thumbs and taking pictures.

Meanwhile, in other news, Tony Blair is sending out a group of supernannies to attend to
thousands of miscreants currently afflicting Britain's fragile psyche. What a joke.

We have two leaders past their time, past thier hold on power leading a war over which they havea decreasingly important say as every day passes. Blair and Bush, two men that used to be stalwarts, liars on a scale unseen since the days of McCarthyism, yes- yet, they used to shoot straight sometimes too. Now they are both scared to come out and say what is truly happening. When Blair did mention on AlJazeera International no less, that Iraq "has been a disaster", his press office ran to the hordes to declare that that PM had been misquoted, oh heavens forbid that should happen.

The one man who is inextricably responsible for this massive fuck (Rumsfeld, for those you not abreast with such issues of inconsequence, and I say that no with sarcasm or malice) up has politely stepped aside, harangued by no one but a foreign court in a land that has no say on his destiny. And who listens to the Germans anymore anwyay? Not since Madame Merkel cozied up to the US just to put in ex-Chancellor Schroeder at ill ease even in the waning light of his years. I'll digress, atleast on the Germans, they have nothing do with this.

France can't say shit cuz they didn't go. Same with ze Germans. China will not step up because well, they didn't start it or want to fix it anyway. Japan is of no consequence. The Arab nations are kneeling for handouts or sucking 'lollipops' just to get 75 year deals on the Natural gas supply contracts, and the USA and Britain are in no pisition under their current governments to do anything but sit there and watch from the sidelines.

That leaves the Shias and Sunnis in Iraq, and they have taken things into their own hands in fine fashion indeed. Everyday a new death toll record is set, everyday is a new day of carnage.

This is why democracy cannot work in the Middle East, because we are still a tribal society. Fuck the Middle East, look at Pakistan. The concept of sharing power is above us, we either need a military government, a sovereign power with an underground police force present everywhere, or we need civil war. There is no in-between, and any such respite should not be looked upon as a normality or change of ways, rather it is no more than a breather before some other sorry asshole publicises an open day for job interviews and then proceeds to blow up the unemployed and needy queue with a truck full of dynamite. Good mourning to you too.

Civil war has changed too. There used to be a time when public radio would tell you you are at war with the enemy. A droning voice would tell you addresses of known Muslims, of Hutus, or Singhalese in this and this area. Or how about the Hindus, or Sikhs, or Tutsis or Tamils? Go kill them. Take your revenge. This would be publicised, it was open war. Now, people stand in line to wash themselves before afternoon prayers only to see their whole mosque torched with people praying inside.

Perhaps it is easy then to forgive the Guardian. Perhaps they do not understand the debase psyches of these warring factions. Perhaps they are uninitiated in the ways of the power hungry. Perhaps then, it is ok to say that Civil war might be coming, but I think war has changed forever, and that it now sneaks up on us when we just think of events as normal. A plane hits a building, and a nation is at war. A Chief of Army Staff presents two shoddy slides of evidence, showing truck movement captured from hundreds of miles above earth, and another nation is turned almost overnight into a warzone. A tyrant falls, the world rejoices, and suddenly the hyenas attack and tear a country apart.

This is war today my friends- and even if you discard everything else I have said, know that this war is here, and here to stay.