Christopher Hitchens latest, "The indecent haste to exit Iraq," is another sterling defense of our mission in Iraq.

Excerpt:

"But the many disappointments and crimes and blunders (the saddest of which is the utter failure to influence Iran, and the corresponding advantage taken by Tehran-backed militias) do not relieve us of a responsibility that is either insufficiently stressed or else passed over entirely: What is to become, in the event of a withdrawal, of the many Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who do want to live in a secular and democratic and federal country? We have acquired this responsibility not since 2003, or in the sideshow debate over prewar propaganda, but over decades of intervention in Iraq's affairs, starting with the 1968 Baathist coup endorsed by the CIA, stretching through Jimmy Carter's unforgivable permission for Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, continuing through the decades of genocide in Kurdistan and the uneasy compromise that ended the Kuwait war, and extending through 12 years of sanctions and half-measures, including the "no-fly" zones and the Iraq Liberation Act, which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote. It is not a responsibility from which we can walk away when, or if, it seems to suit us."

The anti-war left that glories in what they call America's defeat in Vietnam ignores the consequences of our withdrawal of US troops and of support for anti-Communist governments in the region--the Vietnamese boat people, the Cambodian killing fields, to name two. I don't want our nation to go through years of guilt and self-doubt over a mission and a people that believed in America, only to see both abandoned to a terrible fate. This expansionist enemy wants to force America back as it expands, just as the Communists did. We cannot fail to show resolve now in a self deceiving hope to return to the "What me worry? 1990s.

Omar Fadhil (AKA Iraq the Model) has written a plea to America to remain by the side of Iraq; it's a far better case than I can make.