Must everything be devalued? Iyad Allawi, fomer Iraq Prime Minister, said this, via BBC:

We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is

The BBC notes that Allawi, head of the Iraqi National List party, a minority coalition of Shiites and Sunnis, is jockeying for political position in the newly-forming government: “Analysts say Mr Allawi’s comments are part of political manoeuvring as talks continue over creation of a government.”

Not to take anything away from Allawi or the tribulations of the Iraqi people, but we know of a country of exactly the same size as Iraq that had a four-year civil war that cost at least 970,000 casualties. That is an average of over 600 per day — in the way that Allawi is keeping score, ten times worse than what Iraq is experiencing. That country, as you probably have guessed, is the United States.

UPDATE

Wretchard has some insightful comments about the meaning of the fading of “insurgency” and the increasing use of “civil war”, a trend we also commented upon here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 19th, 2006 at 10:56 am and is filed under General, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.