If you read through these two stories you may notice a change in tactics used in the fighting in Iraq. There is no longer a battle between religious sects, in most cases, but instead both groups are choosing targets for "dirty war" reasons.
The war has evolved, or devolved if you will, from a conventional conflict in which two armies face each other to a insurgency against one army and has now finally reached the terrorist vs. government stage.
Examples of this type of warfare abound in recent history. Take for example the Phoenix Program:
In an attempt to cripple or eliminate South Vietnamese communist guerilla resistance (the Vietcong) to both United States forces and the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam, the Phoenix program was allegedly designed to conduct arrest and assassination operations against suspected Vietcong and Vietcong sympathizers. The Phoenix program was developed and operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States Army, and components of several South Vietnamese intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Or the Israeli "targeted killing" campaign:
These "targeted killings," as they are known here, were described by Israeli officials two years ago as "rare and exceptional" measures. But now they are carried out with regularity, using missiles, bombs, tanks, booby traps and gunfire, and they are stirring increasing disapproval from the Israeli public.
Their frequency increased as Palestinian militants sent a wave of suicide bombers to attack Israelis, intensifying the level of violence in the 33-month-long Palestinian uprising, in which approximately 2,950 people have been killed.
Why do I bring this up? Well, due to these kind of reports from our MSM:
Battle suggests new sectarian divides in Iraq
The mortar attacks and bombings appeared to be part of the sectarian reprisal killings that have pushed Iraq into civil warfare over the past year, violence that Bush hopes to quell by sending up to 21,500 more American soldiers to Baghdad and surrounding areas.
The media’s continued use of "sectarian" is wrong and misleading. It pushes the reader to believe that the conflict is an all-out war against religious sides instead of what it really is. A war between political factions seeking power and security. When someone picks up a paper and reads only about "sectarian" violence they envision the religious wars of 500 years ago instead of the American Civil War and reconstruction.
The media’s insistence on using sectarian to describe the violence suggests that us Americans have no major horse to back since it’s not our fight, we are there just trying to help them rebuild the country and keep them from killing each other. But alas, this fight is much more then that. It’s an ideological struggle between the West and fanatical Islam/Iran.
Now why would the media continue to use this word to describe the violence? Is it because some of the killings are indeed sectarian so they form the opinion the whole conflict is sectarian? I’m not so sure. It’s a simple, catch-all phrase, which editors and writers can use to describe something much more complex. It can be used by a reporter to report on violence when he does not want to leave the safety of his hotel to find out who is attacking whom and for what reason…..Sectarian, revenge, criminal in nature, terrorism, counter-terrorism, etc.
How about the fact that when they use this word it helps them describe the situation in their favorite way, "it’s a civil war".
The reason vary but the outcome is the same. The reader who is gullible enough will believe this conflict is indeed a civil war between religious sides when it is not.
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