What Civil War Could Look Like

What Civil War Could Look Like - New York Times:

"Surveying all the nightmare possibilities in an interview late last week, Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador to Iraq, said: 'Those are issues that some people should be thinking about, but I do not believe that we are heading that way. The leaders of Iraq know that they came to the brink with the attack on the shrine, and there has been an evolution of their attitudes as a result. I simply believe that the leaders of Iraq do not want a civil war.'

Lincoln, however, said in retrospect that having leaders who do not want war is not enough - that the problem is whether there are things that they want more than war, and are willing to accept war to get. In Iraq, it seems, this will also determine whether the leaders will one day say with satisfaction that they stepped back from the brink or, sadly like Lincoln, that 'the war came.'"