How do YOU define civil war?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

Wikipedia defines it as
"a war in which parties within the same country or empire struggle for national control of state power. As with any war, the conflict may be over religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth and access to resources."

Britannica (2004) writes
"The term Civil War, although perhaps dated, is used to mean a noninternational armed conflict. It therefore covers any internal conflict, whatever the motive for fighting."
Britannica refers to the Protocol of 1977, which defined how the Genevas applied to local disputes.
Under that protocol, War Crimes were defined as maing war against civilian populations or individual civilians, launching indiscriminate attacks against civlian populations during a civil war.

IRAQ IS FIGHTING A CIVIL WAR, according to everyone but Don Rumsfeld.

[maddiejoan]

1. My winger neighbor...

actually said there was no Civil War in Iraq because there's no slavery going on in Iraq. But then he also thinks we should nuke the Mid-East.

[adarling]

2. your neighbor needs to be checked for a learning disability

what a moron. :yoiks:

[Dangerman]

3. That what's you get...

For ousted a guy, Saddam Hussien, who had nothing to do with 9/11 and replacing him with a corrupt, pro-American, maybe pro-Iranian "democracy".

The world is still safer though. (sarcasm)

[samplegirl]

4. We are as close to a full

scale civil war as we've ever been. We are on more bombing
massaacre or atrocity from a National bloodletting.
But even if that happens there will be ebbs & flows. Just because
people aren't curled up in fetal position under their beds all the time "doesn't" mean theres not a nasty war on.