A small group of current and former conservatives -- including George Will, William F. Buckley Jr. and Francis Fukuyama -- have become harsh critics of the Iraq war. They have declared, or clearly implied, that it is a failure and the president's effort to promote liberty in the Middle East is dead -- and dead for a perfectly predictable reason: Iraq, like the Arab Middle East more broadly, lacks the democratic culture that is necessary for freedom to take root. And so for cultural reasons, this effort was flawed from the outset.

Or so the argument goes.

Let me address each of these charges in turn.

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Mr. Wehner is deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives.

Standard (and lame, and transparent) attack strategy ... Opponent makes claim X, which is valid. To refute opponent's claim, restate it after amplifying it by a factor of 10. Then show how claim 10X has weaknesses. Finally, declare victory.

After reading the piece, it's also factually misleading. Is there a drift away from people like Zarqawi? Not relly, his following was small in the first place. Is there an increasing drift towards Sadr? Yes, and who was causing all kinds of problems earlier? Zaqawi on a "small, terror" level, but Sadr on a broad strategic level. In the three years between now and the W regime leaving office, we will get to see just how horribly this has all gone.

Bush Explains Why Fukuyama Is Wrong