Before getting to the details, let's consider the overarching premiss: that the choice we now face is whether to keep fighting and ultimately prevail, or to withdraw and abandon the Iraqis to their fate. As I see it, this premiss is completely false. If we keep fighting, there is no reason whatsoever to think that we will "prevail", and every reason to think that we will simply sacrifice a lot of American and Iraqi lives for nothing.
I agree that Bush's speech sucked and he would be more persuasive if he addressed the core issue as stated above. The core question is whether or not there is a reason to think that we will "prevail." The correct answer is that it is simply not possible to know right now, because we've changed tactics, and the new tactical approach won't pan out enough to tell if its working until the middle of next month. Both sides seem to be intensely interested in positioning a conclusion about whether or not that tactical approach works in advance of having any evidence. This is corrupt. For example, Hillary Clinton is positioning that we're going to withdraw even if the evidence demonstrates that if we keep fighting we'll succeed. We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar Province, it's working. We're just years too late changing our tactics.
Media Matters, who position themselves as an antidote to political spin, actually engage in political spin on this very topic! Zuckerman did not offer any evidence to support his claim that "the consensus is that the surge is working." In fact, members of Congress, administration officials, and experts have all stated that political reconciliation, which the Bush administration identified as a key to the success of its escalation strategy, has not occurred.
There is no relationship whatsoever between an observation about the political reconciliation and an observation about the success or failure of a military tactic. It is dishonest to conflate them. Its like saying: Zuckerman did not offer any evidence to support his claim that "the consensus is that humans evolved from lower organisms." In fact, members of Congress, administrations officials, and experts have all stated that there is no proof of global warming, another scientific "theory." We should have changed tactics two to three years ago, and we would have if the presidential election had been carried differently. There was, in fact, every reason to change horses in the middle of that particular stream. The horses did not change, and so the strategy did not change, until after the 2006 election. You cannot undo the fact that we went to war in Iraq by pulling out. You have a potentially viable change in tactics that was the fruit of the fact that people finally got around to firing some Republicans. Now you might have an opportunity to do things right going forward, and you're not interested. You're not going to take it. You are doing everything you can to shoot it down before you know whether or not its viable. Why? Because you are too trapped by the extremism of your own political rhetoric to make the right decision? If the surge report is positive and yet the US pulls out of Iraq anyway it will be, frankly, just as irrational and tragic as the decision to go in in the first place. Perhaps thats the history we deserve, but it just goes to show you that it really, deeply, doesn't matter which political party is in charge. RE: Obsidian Wings: Bush's Speech | 
