Visiting Dr. Allawi at his sprawling residence is a short course in just how bad the situation has become for anybody associated with the American purpose in Iraq. To reach the house is to navigate a fantastical obstacle course of checkpoints, with Iraqi police cars and Humvees parked athwart a zigzag course through relays of concrete barriers. An hour or more is taken up with body searches and sniffing by dogs, while American soldiers man turreted machine guns. A boxlike infrared imaging device can detect the body heat of anybody approaching through a neighboring playground. The final security ring is manned by C.I.A.-trained guards from Iraqi Kurdistan. If Dr. Allawi were Ian Fleming’s Dr. No, no more elaborate defenses could be conceived.
This is the man who has been chosen to lead Iraq to the haven of a democratic future, but he is sealed off about as completely as he could be from ordinary Iraqis, in the virtual certainty that insurgents will kill him if they ever get a clear shot.

It’s hard to add anything to that. But here’s one point that I don’t think has been made enough. Who is ultimately responsible for the security of Iraqis? Surely the coalition. Yet, even while we try hard to train a new Iraqi army and police force, it is indisputable that we’ve failed to protect innocent Iraqis from grotesque and mounting violence. This is awful in itself – but also integral to our failure to move the political process forward fast enough. Was this unavoidable? That’s a question worth asking.

SOMETHING POSITIVE: I’m not saying this was ever going to be simple. But the reckoning is surely coming. We have to flush out at least Fallujah and Ramadi soon – or lose the ability to hold national elections in January (if we haven’t already). And the mayhem that maneuver will unleash is not one we can easily stabilize without more troops and resources or a miracle in the capabilities of the Iraqi police and military. Before too long, a draft may become a very big topic on Capitol Hill. Big increases in military spending – over and above what we are already planning – will become necessary. What I worry about is a country that re-elects a president on the basis of denial about Iraq, and then turns on him with a vengeance when things get far worse. So let’s get it all on the table now and see what we need to do. That’s in the president’s long-term interest as well as the world’s.