Perhaps the biggest battle underway is the one we are waging against our own nomenclature. This fuss over civil war is surreal. First and foremost, it is the inherent nature of intrastate conflicts to be conducted within states. What is the Iraqi counterinsurgency anyway but an effort to have Iraqis police themselves? This will unquestionably lead to Iraqi-on-Iraqi killing; not ethnic or sectarian, per se, for there are aligned Sunnis and Shi'ites. The civil conflicts we are witnessing in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories -- and elsewhere -- are ideological, socio-political, and conceivably even theological struggles within denominations of Islam. We better get used to this because there will be plenty more of it.

Which brings us to a second point, and that is the connotation of "civil" implies a lack of American interest and, by default, a preferred lack of American involvement. The choice in Iraq is not between al Qaida and the Sadrists but between what they offer and the Iraqi democratic institutions which we have built and the Iraqis have already approved -- the parliament, the cabinet, the constitution, the army, the police, and so forth. Conventional wisdom suggests our biggest mistake in Iraq was too few troops, or bad WMD intelligence, or not predicating this level of attrition guerrilla warfare; all suggestions are wrong because all were and are reversible. Mistakes are to be expected.

But the strategic blunder which can and may in fact kill the Iraqi liberalization experiment -- a month, a year, or a decade from now -- would be our decision to include movements antithetical to democracy into a democratic process. Muqtada al Sadr is Khomeini incarnate; a young, thirty-something, theocratic screwball with a lot of Iranian weapons and funds, and a long future ahead of himself. His movement represents the largest long-term threat to the Iraqi state. Even with a favorable ending, he has the power to hijack an American-Iraqi triumph in the end. All violence can cease tomorrow, the war can be won, all American forces can be withdrawn, and his singular continued existence as a force for Islamist theocracy could render our effort void if Tehran decides they'd like him as their little lapdog. Until we recognize this and deal with him accordingly, everything we've worked for in Iraq is at the whim of his inner circle.

Ditto this with Lebanon, where Hassan Nasrallah is deemed a part of the "national Lebanese fabric," even as his men partake in sabotage missions against Lebanese politicos. And speaking of Lebanon, how's that ceasefire going? The kidnapped Israeli soldiers have not been returned to their homeland as promised. International peacekeepers are not disarming the sole Lebanese militia that refuses to disarm. Resolution 1559 had not been reinvigorated or implemented, as advocates of an immediate ceasefire guaranteed it would be. Kofi Annan, who swore "Down the line, there will have to be disarmament," has not followed through on this pledge, nor has he strong-armed others to follow through on their respective pledges.

During the fighting this past summer, much was said about changing the status quo in Lebanon; if Hezbollah was not to be dismantled, at least it was to be disarmed. Only those who questioned the giddy behavior of the ceasefire-advocates wondered if they'd raise objections during the rearmament of the Iranian proxy jihadist network. Of course they did not. During that Israeli-Hezbollah scuffle, I offered the following prediction in a previous article: "Depending on how the next few months play out, we will likely be able to determine how the remaining years of the Bush presidency will unfold -- and by extension, which way the Middle East will drift."

It turns out that may be more the case than even I initially believed. Don Rumsfeld, a voice for transformation both within the Pentagon and across the Islamic Mideast, has been relegated to his retirement home. His replacement, however, seems to be more than Dr. Gates, but a whole influx of so-called pragmatic schools of thought that are encouraging the administration to negotiate Iraq away to the Iranians and Syrians. As one CNN journalist phrased it, "They (Assad and Khamanei) were celebrating when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was removed; they were hoping that this was the start of a new American Middle East policy." It is that new policy they may just finally receive if we continue to foolishly view the supposed civil war in Iraq as a sectarian conflict between unpleasant militiamen and warring ethnicities, rather than a conflict between democratic revolutionaries and Iranian marionettes, ex-Ba'athist autocratic mafia-style thugs, and Dark Age jihadists who want to deny the Muslim world a consensually governed federalist society.

We will never have the prescription for Lebanon, the West Bank, and Iraq until we understand the problem -- until we view this as the vortex of a regional war already underway. All signs point to our unwillingness to wage this war seriously, given our aversion to politically undermine the Iranian and Syrian governments. The parameters are sheer lunacy: Hezbollah's ministers withdraw from the Lebanese government, and we react as if that's a bad thing. How strange that the Lebanese premier is politically dependent on those who want to overthrow him. How strange that Assad's boys assassinate yet another prominent Lebanese leader critical of Damascus, and the American response is to contemplate talking with the Syrians about how they could help us. How odd that the Lebanese response is to try and incorporate Syrian-backed jihadists into the very cabinet which they are attempting to kill one at a time.

And what of Iraq? George Stephanopoulos wonders on air if a Bush-Maliki visit will mean Muqtada al Sadr's withdrawal from the Iraqi government. So the man who is subsidized by Tehran, whose militia has grown eight-fold, who trains and is trained by Hezbollah agents, who overruns Iraqi television stations to broadcast propaganda, and who operates death squads may decide he's too good for his people? You mean the infant democracy in Baghdad will have to truck on without warlords? My, the horror.

The self-blame is incessant. We must "stabilize" the region at all costs, we are told. "Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost," Chuck Hagel swears… "It is part of the ongoing struggle against instability… (the) Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israel-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East."

The usually dull senator manages to throw in the often-used Mideast adjectives. In all the history of the Middle East, never has it been more "combustible." What a statement. Also take note how he suggests destruction to be "mindless," seemingly unaware that the destructionists think long and hard how much they want and need to destroy. Mindlessness suggests violence may be sporadic and random, not cool and calculating. Is Mr. Hagel suggesting political assassinations are the former and not the latter? Oh, and of course, "we" are at fault because "we" need to renew the "peace process" -- like Oslo? -- or else. The idea that Israel must been coerced to concessions with an unreliable partner, in order to save our skins in Iraq, is preposterous. Perhaps solving the regional Mideast issues will help solve the Palestinian problem, and not vice versa?