As long as everyone around here keeps calling the Illegal Insurrection in Iraq, or Me$$-O-Potamia (h/t Jon Stewart), a WAR, you keep selling the frame which makes Pres. Bush's arguments for him. Did everybody forget about the PR stunt on the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN? When Commander Codpiece vaulted from the passenger seat of a fighter plane and uttered the phrase, "Mission Accomplished," that should have been the time when Democrats started to advance the frame of bringing the troops home.
War
1. A conflict involving the organized use of arms and physical force between countries or other large-scale armed groups. The warring parties hold territory, which they can win or lose; and each has a leading person or organization which can surrender, or collapse, thus ending the war.
2. (civil war) An armed conflict between two or more different factions within the same country.
3. (rhetorical) A campaign against something. E.g., the war on drugs is a campaign against the use of narcotic drugs; the war on terror is a campaign against terrorist crime.
According to the definition above, since we are not actually fighting the nation of Iraq, it is fallacy to use the phrase "Iraq War," or any other derivative of that phrasing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the Congress and only the Congress has the power to declare war, it is linguistically lazy at best and criminally negligent at worst to label what we are doing in the Middle East a war. Advancing American hegemony, yes; playing at Empire, probably; doing the bidding of one's corporate masters in the Military-Industrial-Energy complex, most likely; but please DO NOT CALL THE IRAQUAGMIRE IN THE MEDDLE-EAST A WAR.
The laws of unintended consequences make George's Unprecedented Aggression in the Cradle of Civilization make the second meaning of the term more of a reality now than when he first started, but since a Civil War can only be between factions within the same country, even this sense of the term is wrong.
The third, and last, sense of this term may technically apply in this case; however, just like the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Poverty," this sense of the definition is just as devoid of substance as the others mentioned. They are slogans, nothing more and nothing less, designed to make the lawmakers look good in the 10-second sound bites on the evening news.
Just like the failed rhetorical devices of the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror," calling our illegal and immoral activity in Iraq a "war" buys into the exact frame the Right-wing talking machine wants to perpetuate. At this point in time, it doesn't matter how you stood on the AUMF, calling what our military forces are doing in Iraq anything other than an occupation or insurrection only keeps those poor troops there longer.
Can we please agree to stop referring to what we are doing in Iraq a war?