Unhelpful commentary from Gen. Colin Powell, U.S. Army (ret.)

Gen. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell is a remarkable man whose career contributions to the American military and to the Bush-41 and -43 Administrations, although sometimes mixed, nevertheless deserve respect. But speaking today in an unofficial capacity on Meet the Press, he added nothing but confusion when he insisted — repeatedly and, as he acknowledged, contrary to statements of our current military commanders and the Bush-43 Administration — that Iraq is in the midst of a "civil war": "The question is, are we doing it [i.e., the "surge"] in the best possible way? [Or] are we delaying the inevitable conclusion of this civil war that ultimately will be fought out between Sunnis and Shi'ias, Shias and Shias, Sunnis and al-Qaeda?"

Okay, then, General: If it's a civil war, then whose side are we on? Who do we shoot on sight now? Who are we rooting for, and which one of the groups you've listed do we want to see win the civil war?

If you can't answer that, then it's not a civil war, General!

If, somehow, we could magically wall off outside influence from state actors like Iran and Syria, and from non-state extrinsic terror organizations like al-Qaeda, would there still be a "civil war"? Iran and Syria and even al-Qaeda aren't engaged in a "civil war." Rather, they're engaged in what is essentially a proxy war — with us, via terrorist operatives and militia proxies. Their primary motivation for engaging in acts of anti-government terrorist against civilians is to create instability that weakens the West, and in particular the United States, as part of a struggle that they're convinced they'll win not on the battlefield of a genuine civil war, but via votes tabulated inside the United States Capitol Building. (That, after all, is where the communist Soviets and Chinese, who were never able to directly or indirectly best the American military, finally won their proxy war against the United States — and only then were the North Vietnamese able to win their civil war.)

It's not inconceivable that such a day might come when there will be Iraqi Kurds seeking to carve out their own independent nation, with Iraqi Shi'ite and Iraqi Sunni forces fighting to achieve some sort of ugly split, via ethnic-cleansing and mass-refugee creation, of the remainder of the country into Shi'ite and Sunni-dominated states. When and if there were combat going on, even guerrilla combat, to accomplish those ends, then that struggle could fairly be called a "civil war."

And I have no doubt, for example, that with military and economic aid, plus some air power and special forces support, we could readily enable the Iraqi Kurds to win a civil war. (Of course, we might end up having to call in air strikes on our NATO ally Turkey to do that. It's not a pleasant prospect.)

But they aren't at that point yet. If — as Gen. Powell also stressed is essential — the fledgling Iraqi government can succeed in reconciling Iraq's internal factions, there won't be a civil war. And the essential keys to permit that success by the Iraqi government — as Gen. Powell also acknowledged, and as everyone on our side ought to be able to agree — are the suppression of such outside influences while assisting the Iraqi army and police in achieving the difficult and inevitably stutter-stepped task of becoming professionally effective forces that can implement the Iraqi government's political decisions (including power-sharing, stake-spreading compromises).

And it's a toss-up right now whether the bigger challenge to that three-pronged strategy's success is the conflict among parties in and around Iraq, or instead the conflict among parties in and around the Washington Beltway. By holding on, by keeping the Iraqi experiment with democracy alive, until the Iraqis can ensure that there will be no genuine and outright civil war, we can indeed thereby also win the proxy war. But that is more a question of sustained willpower and political courage than of sustained firepower or military tactics — and those are indeed the areas in which, as a nation, our war-fighting abilities are the weakest and most vulnerable.

Precisely because of that vulnerability, ideas matter. Words matter. Labels matter.

Colin Powell would never go on American television and say, "I have no confidence in the 82nd Airborne Division. They're badly led, inadequately equipped, and they're almost certain to fail in their next assignment." Even if he thought that — especially if he thought that! — he would have better sense than to let his public words undercut their morale and their purpose and, thereby, their mission.

And Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi can spout crap all day long about how this is a "civil war" that we're in the middle of, and it's unfortunate, but it's just not as big a deal. No one is under any illusion that the likes of those two can tell a civil war from a civil engineer from a civil disobedience rally. Everyone knows they're speaking to and for the likes of MoveOn.org and Michael Moore. So when it comes from their mouths, as then heard by our military forces, by our allies in Iraq, and by our friends and foes elsewhere in the world, the language of distortion, leading so literally and so directly to the language of defeat, can be somewhat discounted.

But when an American military leader of the stature of Colin Powell, though, goes on television and repeatedly, deliberately declares — nay, insists — that this already is a "civil war," then he adds no clarity to the situation. Instead, he hands a propaganda victory to the Iranian, Syrian, al-Qaeda, and other forces who so very much want the struggle in Iraq to be perceived as a civil war now, in large part so that we'll cut and run and thereby permit it to degenerate into a genuine civil war in the future.

This just makes me angry. Gen. Powell is a patriot, but in this particular regard, he's acting the fool. And as a fool he's giving our enemies for free something that our soldiers — and our allies in the fledgling Iraqi government, military, and police forces — are literally spilling blood every day to try to deny them.

Gen. Powell should know better. He doesn't owe a duty not to criticize or to engage in dissent. But he does owe a duty not to adopt the demonstrably wrong verbal distortions that are so desperately desired and relied upon by our enemies.