{"id":615,"date":"2006-04-21T12:58:47","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T11:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2006\/04\/21\/really_a_civil_war"},"modified":"2025-10-10T21:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T20:43:13","slug":"really_a_civil_war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2006\/04\/21\/really_a_civil_war","title":{"rendered":"Really a civil war?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The BBC is reporting that Michael Ancram, a senior Tory MP, has <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk\/4929180.stm\">called for troops to be pulled<\/a> from Iraq, on the grounds that there is a civil war:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&quot;It is time now for us to get out of Iraq with dignity and honour while we still can,&quot; said the former shadow defence secretary.<br \/>\nMr Ancram said Britain must &quot;not take sides between Sunnis and Shias&quot;.<br \/>\n&quot;It has always been evident that in the event of civil war we should just get out,&quot; he said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When it comes to &quot;Sunnis and Shias&quot;, Ancram seems to make the classic mistake of confusing Sunnis (which are the ordinary Muslims who live in the central belt of Iraq around Baghdad, and a large proportion of the Kurdish Muslims as well), and the insurgents, who are apparently not Sunnis but extremist Wahhabis &#8211; hence their practice of bombing mosques.  They come from a Sunni background, but their religious attitudes are starkly different from those of ordinary Sunnis.  It&#39;s in nobody&#39;s interests, least of all those of ordinary Iraqi Sunni Muslims, to be abandoned to that type of insurgent.<\/p>\n<p>(I&#39;m not saying I think troops should stay, just that the insurgents may not be representative of Sunnis, as Ancram seems to think they are.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The BBC is reporting that Michael Ancram, a senior Tory MP, has called for troops to be pulled from Iraq, on the grounds that there is a civil war: &quot;It is time now for&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war_in_iraq_afghanistan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-9V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42502,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/42502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}