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[Tyrone Slothrop]

If this was coming from a shrill lefty critic of the President, I would dismiss it as hysterical. But since George Will is none of those things (OK, he can be critical of the President), I wonder what he's talking about in the last paragraph:

• In all this, the concept of sovereignty is being pounded shapeless. Preemptive war was waged, in part, to notify enemies of the United States that U.S. sovereignty could not be paralyzed by world opinion or the noncooperation of international institutions. And one measure of progress in Iraq was the June 28 transfer of sovereignty.
  
  But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says, "We'll continue operations as the prime minister [Ayad Allawi] sees fit." And readers learn that U.S. commanders "curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops."
  
  So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders who curb the prime minister's will?
  
  A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister's will, or that of Iraq's embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood -- a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence -- the U.S. presence will become untenable.
  
  Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.

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