Opinion (H.D.S. Greenway): Bush's strategy of wishful thinking

AMERICA HAS been consumed by semantic silliness over whether the catastrophe in Iraq is a civil war. It has been clear for almost a year that a civil war between Shia and Sunni factions is in progress, but the White House remains in denial, just as it previously refused to admit there was an insurgency.

There are good reasons for not admitting to a civil war. During our own internal conflict, Southerners spoke of "The War of Northern Aggression." In the graveyards of New England, you find monuments honoring those who died putting down "The Great Rebellion." Neither side wanted to admit to any moral equivalence that the neutral term civil war might imply. Both sides wanted grander terminologies to justify their losses.

In contrast, the Bush administration wants to minimize Iraq's struggles because insurgency and civil war spell failure. A burgeoning insurgency implied that "mission accomplished" had been nothing more than a chimera. A civil war suggests that the victory that President Bush still talks about may be just wishful thinking. Thus the president says the disintegration of the Iraqi state is simply a touch of Al Qaeda-instigated sectarian violence.

Wishful thinking and its hand-maiden, deliberate deception, have been the common denominators for the Bush administration's failures -- starting with the original concept that imposing democracy by force could transform the Middle East.

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