President Bush's address to the nation Sunday night was a winner, although he's not at his best speaking just to a camera -- he's better with an audience (think back to the remarkable speeches to joint sessions of Congress and the U.N.). His point that it's greatly preferable to wage the war on terror in the streets and alleys of central Iraq than in the U.S. is an important one and something that the average citizen may not have grasped explicitly.
This passage about the violent opposition to the Coalition from Ba'athist dead-enders and the motley collection of jihadists inside Iraq was among the more important:
This violence is directed not only against our coalition, but against anyone in Iraq who stands for decency, and freedom and progress.There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.
Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there -- and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.
Read the full text via the White House.
Most of the mass media and political opposition won't be mollified, of course, but there's actually nothing Bush could say or do that would satisfy their ravening desire to gnaw at his credibility.
A Fox News pundit tonight made the pertinent observation that the timing of the speech had much to do with the fact that President Bush has just returned from his annual retreat to Crawford, where he commonly spends time reviewing, reflecting, recharging, and, if necessary, setting a new course. That was a fresh insight (at least to me) that both makes sense and has some charm to it. Plenty of us make use of a change of scenery to find a little quiet just to think.
The omniscient InstaPundit has the best linkable take of the evening. I'm sure there will be more to ponder tomorrow and in the days to come.
It was an outright challenge to the neo-McGovernites, and even more of a challenge to those wafflers (and several are beginning to appear) among the Democratic presidential candidates, specifically mentioning Somalia and Beirut (bipartisan bugout history there), and noting that lessening our commitment would be a disaster, and play into the terrorists' hands.Posted by Alan at September 8, 2003 12:08 AMvia InstaPundit