Force, but what else?

ìTransition Date Still Firm, President Says: Bush Is Calm in Reaction to Violence,î by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, Washington Post, 6 April, p. A13.

The Bush Administration is correct to paint the cleric Moqtada Sadr as the ìone person who is deciding that rather than allow democracy to flourish, he going to exercise force,î but clearly our answer has to be more than simply responding with force.

Right now, by standing firm on the transition date, weíre suggesting a policy of limited regret that sends signals to leaders like Sadr that their desired outcome is still quite possible: we pull out and abandon Iraq to those who will enforce a new, probably religious-inspired authoritarianism that keeps society there largely isolated from the outside world.