We’re in the presidential palace. This is getting to be a generals question in political science. Who actually wields effective power in Baghdad in the pre-dawn hours of April 7? I’m not sure what Hobbes would say right now: the Leviathan is at the gates, indeed inside the citadel, but it treads so lightly it is barely there. Maybe power shifts the minute a critical tipping point occurs in the assumptions of the population. Whom do they fear the most? Arresting: the moment when power changes hands. One day, someone will figure out when it happened. And they’ll probably be wrong.
NO U.N. CONTROL: The Pentagon and the British military liberated Iraq. They should both now govern it for the short-term. The notion that the U.N. should become immediately involved – except as a humanitarian adjunt to U.S.-U.K. forces – is a joke. I agree with William Rees Mogg in the Times of London this morning:
The Americans know that M Chirac double-crossed them over Resolution 1441; they know every detail of how and why he did it; they know what it has cost them in money and in lives. They will shake hands at photo opportunities; they will play the Marseillaise; they will drink toasts in mediocre champagne at diplomatic dinners; but they will be slow to forgive and they will never forget.
That is, indeed, the message that must be sent to Chirac, the Iraqi dictator’s chief sponsor. And if I’m not very much mistaken, it already has.
The Dish 