BELMONT CLUB’S ERROR

Wretchard of the Belmont Club misreads my analogy – two 9/11s a month – and then corrects himself. That’s the blogosphere working! But the spin he manages to put on all this is, well, off the deep end. He cites a worrying report that Britain is reducing its troop levels in Iraq as a sign that everything is peachy! Maybe he hasn’t read Novak yet. Or the papers. Then he rightly says that the deaths of Iraqis are not America’s fault, no more than 9/11 was Bush’s fault. Of course that’s true in any deep, moral sense. But when you invade a country, depose its dictator, disband its army and take responsibility for its security, you are responsible for its security. I know that’s a tough word for Bush administration officials to understand: responsibility. Yes, the authorities are responsible when citizens cannot live with any measurable degree of physical security. In fact, it’s the first responsibility of any governing body. Read your Hobbes. Also read Hobbes to see what happens once confidence in order collapses, when sovereignty is in doubt, when insufficient force is deployed, and on and on and on. We either have to ramp up our forces, retake Fallujah and Ramadi, redouble our faltering efforts to rebuild the Iraqi army – or we have to withdraw and leave chaos and a new terror-state behind. Them’s the options. Bush has to tell us which before November 2. And run on his plan. But he’d rather duck and hide.