O. C. Register on Al Qaeda in Iraq

The O. C. Register agrees with the LAT concerning Bush's comments on Al Qaeda in Iraq. The OCR calls Bush's comments dishonest, which arguably is stronger than the LAT's "tendentious trope," but not as cute.

The OCR argues that Bush has offered no evidence for his argument that if the U.S. leaves Iraq too soon, Al Qaeda in Iraq will have the kind of safe haven that the Taliban had in Afghanistan. But how much evidence is needed to make this argument stick? It seems obvious that a principal aim of Al Qaeda in Iraq is to force out the coalition and take control of Iraq, else why are they killing people? Once they take control, they will be Iraq's government and will have as much power as Saddam Hussein had before the invasion.

The OCR argues that the only argument for staying much longer that has a "shred of intellectual respectability" is that the invasion and subsequent mismanagement "unleashed such dangerous and violent forces that" the U.S. has "a moral responsibility to try to calm things down to a stable situation before" leaving.

That's Colin Powell's "you broke it, you fix it" argument and it requires a narrow understanding and interpretation of U.S. responsibilities in the world, besides which it's focused on the past. It assumes that the U.S. was guilty of wrong doing in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and therefore must do penance. If there was no wrong doing and no guilt and therefore there is no penance then what are the responsibilities of the world's most powerful nation? Apparently, the OCR believes we have none.