California Conservative

This morning, President Bush delivered a speech that focused on winning instead of timetables for troop withdrawals and delivered his most detailed breakdown of who we’re fighting while briefly outlining what subjects he’ll be addressing in future speeches.

One of the things that President Bush talked about was the “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” Here’s the link for the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. It’s significant because it talks in great detail about all the considerations that will define victory in Iraq.

“OUR ENEMIES AND THEIR GOALS”

• The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida. These three groups share a common opposition to the elected Iraqi government and to the presence of Coalition forces, but otherwise have separate and to some extent incompatible goals.
• Rejectionists are the largest group. They are largely Sunni Arabs who have not embraced the shift from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to a democratically governed state. Not all Sunni Arabs fall into this category. But those that do are against a new Iraq in which they are no longer the privileged elite. Most of these rejectionists opposed the new constitution, but many in their ranks are recognizing that opting out of the democratic process has hurt their interests.
• We judge that over time many in this group will increasingly support a democratic Iraq provided that the federal government protects minority rights and the legitimate interests of all communities.
• Saddamists and former regime loyalists harbor dreams of reestablishing a Ba’athist dictatorship and have played a lead role in fomenting wider sentiment against the Iraqi government and the Coalition.
• We judge that few from this group can be won over to support a democratic Iraq, but that this group can be marginalized to the point where it can and will be defeated by Iraqi forces.
• Terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida make up the smallest enemy group but are the most lethal and pose the most immediate threat because (1) they are responsible for the most dramatic atrocities, which kill the most people and function as a recruiting tool for further terrorism and (2) they espouse the extreme goals of Osama Bin Laden, chaos in Iraq which will allow them to establish a base for toppling Iraq’s neighbors and launching attacks outside the region and against the U.S. homeland.
• The terrorists have identified Iraq as central to their global aspirations. For that reason, terrorists and extremists from all parts of the Middle East and North Africa have found their way to Iraq and made common cause with indigenous religious extremists and former members of Saddam’s regime. This group cannot be won over and must be defeated, killed or captured, through sustained counterterrorism operations.
• There are other elements that threaten the democratic process in Iraq, including criminals and Shi’a religious extremists, but we judge that such elements can be handled by Iraqi forces alone and/or assimilated into the political process in the short term.

In short, the President is giving the Senate the detailed report that they demanded in the Warner amendment and then some.

John Kerry and Jack Reed gave the Democrats’ response, with Sen. Kerry at one point saying “No one’s talking about cutting and running.” Oh really, Senator? Rep. Murtha’s proposal sounded utterly defeatist, saying that our military had done all it could and that we couldn’t win militarily. Also, I don’t imagine that you’d characterize Ted Kennedy’s characterizing the President’s plan a failure and Iraq “Bush’s quagmire” as cutting and running, would you? Further, all the talk amongst Senate Democrats saying that they’d change their votes if they’d “known then what” they “know now” about WMD’s couldn’t be construed as cutting and running, could they?

I wrote last week that Sens. Biden, Clinton and Obama have talked about not immediate withdrawal but none of them talked about winning. Only yesterday, they started talking about winning and it sounds contrived and forced. Sen. Kerry’s claims that he’s only interested in winning smacks of pure BS. It’s obvious that they’re the “Johnny come lately” crowd to winning in Iraq.

Another thing that jumped out at me is that Sens. Kerry’s and Reed’s speech sounded alot like a “Me, too” to President Bush’s vision of winning the war and establishing a democracy.

The President sounded presidential, informed and statesmanlike while Sens. Kerry and Reed sounded petty, ill-informed and tentative.

Michelle Malkin applauds the Bush speech.

UPDATE: Here’s a headline from Sen. Russ Feingold’s website: “Feingold Proposes Timetable for Iraq Withdrawal” and here’s Feingold’s statement on the President’s speech:

“While today’s speech by the President was billed as yet another attempt to lay out a plan for finishing the military mission in Iraq, the only new thing the administration gave the American people was a glossy 35-page pamphlet filled with the same rhetoric we’ve all heard before. Today’s action by the White House isn’t a step forward, it’s a step back. In fact the booklet the administration released to accompany the President’s speech is described as a “…document [that] articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003…” That alone makes it clear that the President seems more dug in than ever to the same old “stay the course” way of thinking. This is not a strategy, and it certainly is not a plan to complete the military mission in Iraq.

I guess this throws a major wrench in Sen. Kerry’s claims that “No one’s talking about cutting and running.”

Then there’s this paragraph from Sen. Boxer’s statement:

Second, he refuses to acknowledge the fact that our long term presence in Iraq is fueling the very insurgency that the President vows to end

Perhaps Sen. Kerry can enlighten me on the difference between cutting and running that he says Senate Democrats aren’t advocating and Sen. Boxer’s belief that the insurgency is growing and America pulling out would take sap the strength of the insurgency.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 10:30 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.