That’s what I’m saying. Every war in Star Wars except for the Vong would be a Civil War. Clone Wars, Republic vs Sith Empire, FO vs Resistance…

We may need to rename something.

Kinda hard to rename something that’s referred to as the galactic civil war in the Star Wars universe itself.

Unfortunately.

The Galactic Empire was the authority for most of the Galaxy, it was a well-organized institution with a huge army and lots of power.

The Rebellion was a civil group (which grew bigger with the pass of time) that was against this galactic authority, and their army consisted of only civilians (although they were well-prepared too).

I guess that's why it's called a civil War, because it is the citizens (or civilians in this case) against the government.

The Clone War for example, was a war in which both sides had great armies with important leaders and they were both governments, only that in different regions of the Galaxy. This could be compared a little to the Cold War (only that in the Clone War, both sides were fighting militarily against the other).

That is why the Clone War had such bigger battles and many times, the numbers were the decisive factor on winning a battle or not. However, in the Galactic Civil War, only one of the sides had a big army, so the other side had to achieve their victory based mainly in strategy and tricks, rather than on how many ships or soldiers were fighting.

The conflict in the original trilogy is established to be a civil war by the opening crawl. A revolution seeks to overthrow and destroy a power perceived to be oppressive, causes a fundamental and sudden change in political power and political organization, when the population revolts against the government. A rebellion is more about resisting a power perceived to be oppressive, a refusal to submit, to obey that power. The Rebel Alliance did not seek to introduce a new form of government, they - rightly - viewed the Empire as an illegitimate power-grab by Palpatine, they refused to accept it, fighting to restore the authority of the Senate. This resulted a civil war, because there were pro-Empire and pro-Republic factions on almost every planets.

The Clone Wars was also a civil war, but that's a bit more complex. The Separatists built an army, it wasn't a war between the people, but between pro-Republic and pro-Separatist planetary governments. Also, the Separatists are standing in a strange place between secessionists, traitors and rebels - they raised an army in secret, and wanted to attack the union they were still part of, planning to execute a Republic Senator, with ongoing negotiations about their membership. The narration in the Clone Wars series simply calls it "Separatist rebellion."

Interesting, you're right @WriterBuddha seeing it that way, it would be correct to call it a civil war.

You have a point. In Legends, it should remain labeled as a civil war. In Canon, it was more of a revolution, which is actually a bad thing.

A civil war is when different factions, usually one fighting for independence, are fighting within a single nation. In Legends, as with the Original Trilogy, the Rebels just wanted to free themselves from the Empire. They didn't want to take over the Empire's government or force Imperial worlds to submit to their rule.

In Canon, the reason why it is more of a revolution, is because the New Republic claims dominion over Imperial worlds (imperialism) and the entire goal of the Rebellion is to claim the power over the galaxy and reinstate the Republic as the galactic government.

I'm afraid that would mean, Legends quite missed the entire point.

The Republic is the voluntarily formed democracy with a constitution, built on principles of freedom, peace and justice. This was overthrown by Palpatine who declared himself to be an Emperor. The Galactic Empire is actually the Galactic Republic that fell under the control of an illegitimate regime. The rebels fought to restore the Republic, to restore democracy in the galaxy, to force out the illegitimate regime and replace it with the legitimate, constitutional, democratic government.

Disney made some serious missteps, because the "Galactic Concordance" implies that the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the Galactic Empire recognized each other as two legitimate factions, whereas that's something you can never do in this situation, unless you give up the very principles you're fighting for. Those "imperial worlds" were Republic territories under the rule of an illegitimate regime, and the idea that they were meant to be recognized as legitimate independent states, moreover, to recognize the Empire itself to be a legitimate and independent state is to position tyranny and democracy, as well as legitimate government and illegitimate government as two equally valid.

No wonder George Lucas himself described the situation of the "imperial worlds" he wanted for his third trilogy like this: "The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win."

^ The majority of people living on Imperial-centered worlds wanted Imperial rule. That's the definition of democracy, right? Unless democracy is mob rule (which it is), so if the majority of planets want the Republic to rule over all, they should rule over all, local populations be damned.