(NOTE FROM JOHN: AJ was recently a Defense Intelligence officer working on the Iraq war.)
With all the commotion over McCain and other deluded/dishonest war cheerleaders claiming that some parts of Iraq are safe or thriving or something other than a collapsed state, it's worth noting, again, that civil war is not characterized by constant all-out fighting but rather by the potential for violence anywhere, anytime, against anyone. Juan Cole explains this well today:
Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don't hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on.Precisely.
It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper's bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn't so bad). . . McCain, you see, knows exactly what I know about guerrilla wars and civil wars. Hell, people used to shop freely in Saigon in the early 1970s! And if he is saying what he is saying, it is because he is attempting to convey an overly optimistic picture with which to deceive the American public.
