WSJ's James Taranto makes this excellent point while discussing President Bush's Army War College speech on Iraq.
American public opinion is now the most important front in the war, and it's high time the president began waging the battle. An American election is approaching, which the Democrats--having lost all three elected branches of government for the first time since before the Baathists seized power in Iraq--are positively desperate to win. With the economy going great guns, disaster in Iraq is the Dems' only hope for defeating President Bush.Posted by Alan at May 25, 2004 05:17 PMThe Democratic Party is in a morally hazardous position: Its interests coincide with the interests of America's enemies. We get e-mails from Bush-haters who are positively giddy at every setback in Iraq, which they see as setbacks for President Bush--never mind that they're also, and more importantly, setbacks for America and for the Iraqi people.
Unlike some of his colleagues (Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd), John Kerry has been careful not to disparage America or urge defeat. But it's hard to see how he can win the presidency unless Americans lose confidence in the Iraq effort--and thus hard to see how a President Kerry would enter office with a mandate to succeed, rather than to get out.