Prudently withholding endorsement, National Review's Rich Lowry published a reader's citation of death rates estimated in Iraq today, and those in the American Civil War. Deduction being: three times as many Iraqis die every month than Americans one hundred forty years ago. The correspondent sent quite a paralogism — even if the death rate comparison weren't off by a factor of ten. Motivation and circumstances of death mean everything, otherwise natural disasters or foreign invasions could be bent into conformation with the "civil war" argument. Anything could, even Iraq as is.
First, modern means of asymmetric warfare allow a small group to slaughter many, many people. Al Qaeda agents — non-native to begin with — killed scores of Shiites on Thanksgiving Day inasmuch as they simply targeted them, not because of attrition in a mutually open engagement.
Second, one must consider the dead and their murderers — most dead Iraqis were just that, Iraqis. Most often, they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Confederacy was clearly defined, with boundaries and precepts and institutions athwart the Union. Who are the "Sunnis"? Who are the "Shiites"? Who are their leaders? Where are their bases of operation? What about territory? Livery?
Just from observation, there are a lot of criminally violent men who enjoy concealing themselves and killing for sport. As long as we are actually identifying a real sectarian struggle over polity: none of these criteria can, in Iraq, be flatly satisfied. If, according to estimates, about 13 percent of the American southern population fought in the Confederacy's armies, comparable figures in Iraq would be half a million Sunnis and two million Shiites. Assuming ethnic unanimity, which is untenable, apply this to the country's Shiites. Does Iranian proxy Muqtada al-Sadr command two million, accoutred for war? One million? Five hundred thousand? Ten thousand? Or, as reported, but a few thousand?
The Iraqi Army boasts well over one hundred thousand, uniforms included. Worried Westerners are playing with numbers and semantics, and they are wasting their time.