The Civil War Avenger Strikes Again

Yesterday I wrote about a campaign to get the Washington Post to start calling the violence in Iraq a "civil war." As I suggested then, it could be a lone pajama-clad blogger, a black-helicopter squadron or whoever was "really" behind The Da Vinci Code. Whatever the source, every recent live-chat host with an oar in politics or the war has been asked to explain why that term isn't being used, and today Michael Fletcher joins a not very exclusive club that includes Dan Balz, Howard Kurtz, John Harris, Mike Abramowitz and Eugene Robinson. From Fletcher's live chat:

Washington, D.C.: Now that Baghdad is on track to see 15-20,000 fatalities on an annual basis with political and sectarian violence -- certainly more horrific than what we saw during the Guatemalan and Salvadoran civil wars, why can't the Post call the conflict a civil war?

I get the sense that this word, however apt, will not be used until American polticians start using it, and I don't understand that.

Michael Fletcher: That's a helluva question. I know civil war has become a really loaded term in the Iraq context, but when does sectarian violence become civil war? What's the threshold? I, for one, don't know.

At least Civil War Avenger didn't have the gall to say what was said in Robinson's chat: I keep asking the Post political chatters to answer this question, but it doesn't get answered. That was after Balz, Kurtz and Harris had, um, answered it.

Rock on, Civil War Avenger. Rock on.