Hitchens on Iraq.

If you missed Tim Russert's CNBC show tonight, try to catch one of the many repeat showings in the next day or so. The guests are Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens and the subject is, unsurprisingly, the current presidential election. It's hard to imagine a more cogent discussion of the election issues. Let me just set out one great exchange:

RUSSERT: What do we do about Iraq? What's going to happen? When American people are confronted, day in and day out -- a thousand soldiers killed -- 7,000 wounded and injured. There's a sense, obviously, in the world, that the United States will eventually say: Enough! We're getting out!



SULLIVAN: I hope to God not. If we need more troops, put more troops in there. ... You've gotta go through with this. And I think there's still a twenty, thirty percent chance of our succeeding.



HITCHENS: Let's take, I mean, let's put the case ... that the election takes place in a form that's not too contemptible, that people will say, okay, it's a good deal better than nothing, and that election is won by a party or coalition of parties that requests the United States to withdraw. What then? I mean, that would persuade me that you probably couldn't hope to hold on in the face of that. If, instead, we are fighting a war against people who are deliberately trying to sabotage the election, then there's obviously no question but that one must stay and mean that, under no circumstances, will we turn over a country of the importance of Iraq with the responsibilities we've inherited there to the Clockwork Orange fascists, the fundamentalists. They'll never go. The day will never come when they will own Iraq, and there will be no one in the United States who will be able to disagree with that even if every one of their sons has been killed in this war. Because it's self-evident. That's why, I think, there isn't more reaction to this combination of gross administration incompetence and these heartbreaking casualties. People know, in some way, that Iraq cannot be given over to Bin Ladenism. It doesn't need any further explanation. The President, actually, doesn't need to add any more. People have got this point.

Hitchens got that right, I think. Bush opponents who are tearing their hair out wondering why people aren't getting more upset about the conduct of the war in Iraq ought to see that.