By Michael O'Hanlon

In his statements about letting Iraqis handle their own civil strife, perhaps Rumsfeld was trying to drive home to Iraqis the message that they should not count on the distant American superpower to bail them out if civil war begins. This message is grounded in a sound logic; Iraqis do need to step up to the plate and solve more of their own problems. But as a full indication of what our military plans would be for any incipient civil war, it is not the right strategy. Now is the time to reassess.

How to Stop a Civil War

There is much more at stake here than the fate of one detainee. Mr. Hamdan's case will test a broader strategic shift in the American approach to fighting terrorism.

A Bellwether for the Power of a President

I GOT back to Iraq two weeks ago, having been away more than a year.

Gone were the American tanks that used to guard the intersections. Instead, aggressive teenagers with machine guns and shiny soccer jerseys ruled the streets. They poked their heads into cars and detained whomever they wanted. There were even 8-year-olds running checkpoints, some toting toy pistols, others toting real ones. Whatever they carried, 4-foot-tall militias made me nervous. The streets now had a truly Liberian feel.

If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel.

See also The Beseiged Press in the latest New York Review of Books.

Iraq Violence Turns Inward

This week in the magazine, Jon Lee Anderson writes about President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, of Liberia, the first democratically elected female head of state in Africa. Here, with Amy Davidson, Anderson discusses Johnson Sirleaf, her country’s civil war, and his time as a boy there.

After the Warlords

In modern-day Baghdad, the carnage takes a different, less organized form, but the state of affairs is truly apocalyptic. The few Western journalists left in Baghdad these days have armed cars to follow them to intervene in case of kidnapping attempts. The violence is so intense that it is impossible for Westerners to walk the streets—regular Iraqis are afraid to have them in their shops or be seen talking with them in public. I do not plan on returning to Iraq, partly because I have found it impossible to do much real reporting in such an atmosphere of corrosive fear. Meanwhile, Iraqis live with all of this and worse every day. Journalists who have left and maintain contact from the outside by phone watch their former colleagues come unhinged as each day brings more suicide bombings and their less well-publicized corollary: US air raids. A low-level civil war is already under way between the Sunni and Shiites. Where is it all headed?

The Walrus Magazine | Dispatches from the Void

Three years after America invaded, Iraq is as violent as ever

Iraq | Murder is certain | Economist.com