Symposium: Addressing the Address

Co-authored by Mario Loyola

In his speech, the president once again talked strategy not politics. He explained why protecting the population of Iraq was the key both to military success and political progress; he explained how a strong and effective Iraqi state is coming together slowly, link by link; and he committed the nation to a long-term security relationship with Iraq that will survive his presidency by decades. He laid out a vision of how these efforts protect America — and are vital to the security of our children.

Meanwhile Democrats continued to talk politics not strategy, arguing that Iraq’s unity is purely Iraq’s problem. But it isn’t. Iraq’s failure to achieve political reconciliation raises the specter of a failing state in Iraq. And if you think a failing state in faraway Afghanistan was bad, stop and think what could come out of a failing state right in the middle of the Middle East!

It’s not just the Iraqis who need to achieve political reconciliation. We need them to achieve it too. We need Iraq to reach full governing capacity as a state. We need a fully capable Iraq to cooperate with us in the war on terror. To threaten them with withdrawal if they fail to produce what we need is like threatening your enemy with surrender if they don't submit.

And then there is the question of basic decency. Part of the reason the president gave this speech now — and part of the reason he went to Anbar a week ago — was to reassure those Iraqis who have cast their lot with us as friends and allies that we won’t abandon them in their struggle against the common terrorist enemy. They need to hear that now.

While the Democrats fight off the far-left enemy whose farcical extremism and lack of decency threaten to discredit war’s opponents generally, the president continues to lead a struggle for peace and security in the Middle East that is altogether more vital, rational, and dignified. That is what came across most of all in Thursday night’s speech.

Mario Loyola is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He recently returned from Iraq.

Clifford D. May

I know a lot of you thought: Petraeus and Crocker are doing fine, why does Bush need to butt in and let the antiwar cabal make this about him, rather than about them?

But Thursday night Bush said something important — and he had to say it himself: Success in Iraq now means the U.S. defeats al Qaeda there (in what al Qaeda sees as the most important theater in its global struggle against us), frustrates Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions, and establishes a long-term relationship — political, economic and military — with the government and peoples of Iraq.

No serious argument can be made that the U.S. national interest would be better served by the alternative: retreating from Iraq in exhaustion and disgrace; letting Iraq become an al Qaeda base and/or an Iranian colony. Yet the war’s opponents will attempt to make that case by saying al Qaeda in Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda Beyond Iraq; the mullahs of Tehran just want their legitimate grievances addressed; and, besides, Bush lost the battle for Iraq long ago.

A stable Iraqi government that cooperates with the U.S. in the war against Islamist/terrorist states and movements would be less than the shining city on a hill that Bush intended to midwife back in 2003. But such an Iraq would be as good an ally — maybe better — than any other we currently have in the Muslim world. Surely, achieving that is preferable to a humiliating defeat – the outcome that MoveOn.org and its associates fervently seek.

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.