Michael Totten Reports Live From Israel-Lebanon Border

The media likes to defend itself against blogger criticism by noting that 1% of them are reporting from dangerous warzones. Well! 1% of bloggers are doing the same.

Not me, of course. But then Jane Hall -- a frequent proponent of this defense -- isn't reporting from anywhere more dangerous than the quad at Columbia University, either.

Nice work, Michael.

Michael Yon, meanwhile, is sounding the alarm bells on the long-feared (or long-anticipated, depending on your politics) Iraqi civil war.

When I first alerted the public about the growing civil war in Iraq back in February 2005, those cautions were dismissed or ignored. Yet in all the time since, the fire has been growing in Iraq, while people here quibble over the pros and cons of using terms such as “sectarian violence� versus “civil war.� Painfully silly. It’s as if firefighters rushed to a conflagration and instead of recognizing it for what it is, fighting it for what it is, calling it what is, instead of unrolling hoses, the firefighters instead began arguing over radios and loudspeakers about whether to call the fire a conflagration or an inferno. And while they argued, people were burning to death, and the blaze was spreading, and firefighters were being surrounded.

Despite incredible progress in Iraq, we are now in great peril of losing the war entirely. At the current rate, we will witness genocide as a nation rips itself apart along sectarian seams.

Yon isn't a knee-jerk defeatist or quagmirologist. So, if he says things are slipping towards the ragged edge of Hell itself, I'm inclined to take his word for it.

This is why I advocate the partition of Iraq. Some will say that a unified, peaceful, multiethnic Iraq is better.

I say do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And the perfect, to me, is seeming more and more impossible.

And: It could very well be that the threat of partition causes the Sunnis to also accept the good (a unified, peaceful Iraq, where they get a say in, and a cut of, the oil sales) over the perfect, from their point of view (they get to rule Iraq).

Finally, we really do have a war that's "All about the oil," not that the lefties have noticed. The Sunnis live, largely, in areas that don't have oil. They want to have control over the crazy-oil money. Serious threats that they will be cut out of the oil money altogether will have an effect.

Quite frankly, I don't know why this wasn't expressly threatened two years ago.

Let them know: you can either have a proportional share of oil revenues -- 25% or so -- or 0%. It's that simple. If you want the 25%, stop killing people.

Hat tip Confederate Yankee, who also has a case of a photo with a very misleading caption.

posted by Ace at 01:31 PM

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