It seems to me that the American people want to know if we’re winning or losing in Iraq. The message from the MSM is that we’re losing, which I doubt, but the President didn’t offer enough evidence to win over many of the fence-sitters. It was nice that he highlighted the fact that we’re fighting Al Qaeda on the streets of Baghdad and all, but the bottom line is what matters. If we’re making progress, the people will be patient, but if we’re not, they’ll just change channels.
Basically, he blew it tonight, so he should wait a month and do it again, this time with the evidence of success.
Here’s your basic transcript in case you didn’t hear it.
UPDATE: OK, the details are starting to come out, so maybe it wasn’t so bad; the President hit the high points, and the minions will supply the detail.
There is unfortunately very little that can be said about progress, because it is basically outside our control. This entire adventure turns on what the Iraqi people want and at this point, that is a very unclear picture. One election does not make a democracy. The US government is telling them what they ought to want, but until our troops are gone and the Iraqis are on their own, we won’t know whether we made the sale or not. Whether the Kurds, Sunni and Shia want to come together and make a real democratic government is still a very open question. At the end of the day, if they don’t, Mr. Bush’s presidency will be viewed very much the same as Lyndon Johnson’s– a lot of kids got killed for nothing.
I agree with your conclusion, but I think we’re going to know fairly soon how long it’s going to take the Iraqis to get their act together.