Thak you for the compliment, I enjoyed some of your essays (even if I didn’t always agree with them). I concur that we have reached the point where polite people “agree to disagree.”

However, one quick point I would mention, I think that you disregard “approval ratings” too quickly. In today’s Washington, “approval rating” is a currency that you can take to the bank. It allows you to keep people in line when their instinct may be to go the other way. I think you have seen in the past week or so an increasing number of Republicans who are worried about what the war. I would expect this to only increase when Congress comes back from recess. The fact that this coincides with falling poll numbers is, I think, not coincidental.

Thanks for the last word.

I have no doubt that, despite what you may hear, inside the White House and Pentagon there is a relentlessly critical eye being given to what is going on in Iraq and in the larger War on Terror. No one is rigidly or dogmatically “staying the course.” Critical adjustments are being made all the time. Staying the course, in this instance, means riding out low points, like the recent spike in casualties, because the overall mission is clearly succeeding. Pulling out now, if that is what you are suggesting, would be a disaster of unending global proportions.

My suspicion is that if you—or anyone else—were to read, for instance, Arthur Chrenkoff’s 100,000-word account of “The Good News from Iraq” you would not be so angst-ridden over the undeniable progress in Iraq.

It has become obvious to me, as I pointed out in a recent column, that the “strategy,” for lack of a better word, on the part of the Democratic Party and the left, is to deny any and all progress or success in Iraq. This, in an attempt to make it harder for the Republican Party to win again in ’06 and ’08. It is a flawed plan; call me an optimist, but I do not believe this collective exercise in truth denial will be enough to stop the Republican Party in either election.

The president’s personal “approval rating” is largely meaningless, I think, because neither he, nor his vice president, will ever run for office again. As a measure of how things are actually progressing in Iraq it is entirely irrelevant. Again, these numbers and their supposed significance are simply another “thing” that can be exaggerated and exploited to keep the Angry Left and “the base” engaged. Whoever next runs for office on the Republican ticket will not in any meaningful way be either hailed or criticized for President Bush’s Iraq/GwoT record. It will forever be his and his alone.

Thanks for an interesting debate. You have a nice ‘blog, BTW. Cheers.

Thank you for correctly clarifying my remarks. The President’s approval ratings have an effect on how we percieve the efforts here. If the public turns against the war, it will be more dificult to be effective over there, because of the political desire to “shake things up” as well the fact that it could result in a much more hostile Congress. I think it will also effect recruiting and reenlistment rates.

In that way Vietnam is instructive, it was when the American public turned against the war that we had real problems.

I would suggest that you actually go back and read Sen. Durbin’s comments, not the furor that followed. I think that you would see that your characterization is a bit off.

Regardless, if you believe that “clearly, winning is what we are now doing” then there is no reason to change. Fortunately, you are in a increasingly shrinking minority in this view point. It is this type of thinking that increases the danger to our country, a critical eye is always important, even when it is your guy making the policy.

What you don’t seem to realize is that this stay the course attitude is failing. Approval ratings of 36% or 40% will not only cripple a Presidency, but also make it hard for us to actually accomplish anything in Iraq.

So if, in your opinion, the likes of a Sen. Durbin is so wildly outside the mainstream or unrepresentative of what you perceive to be the position of the Democrats–or the strictly-American “left”–I’d suggest you rethink either your party affiliation or your argument.

Calls for the president to admit mistakes are merely political ploys, IMO, because: there is an obvious and concerted effort on the part of many in the MSM, the Democratic Party and the left, to whatever extent those things are or are not distinct, to portray the president and his advisory team as bumbling, unprepared, arrogant “cowboys.” A sincere admission on the part of the president of a “mistake,” if in fact he has made one, a point I am not willing to concede, would only add fuel to the collective critical fire, which obviously sustains itself without additional executive additives.

You wrote, “If something doesn’t change [the president] will lose the war over here, only in part because of what is going on over there.” My rebuttal to this point is simply this: all will like us when we win.

And, clearly, winning is what we are now doing.

You apparently are doing exactly what you ask not be done in you last sentence. Taking the actions of a few and projecting them on to the many. I think that you misinterpret the criticisms of places like Abu Ghraeb as being directed against individual soldiers when I think most of the thoughtful criticism was more directed the policies that allowed for the situation to occur. As for your criticisms of the left, I think there are very clear distinction between what is said internationally and here in the States — intermixing the two is not fair.

As for admitting mistakes, why is it the end of the world to admit that there were intelligence mistakes or policy mistakes? Part of the biggest problem the President faces right now is that his support is plummeting, in part because he keeps saying the same thing over and over. Honesty, remember that what this guy said he was bringing back to the Oval Office. An honest assessment of how we got where we are is the first step to figuring out where we want to be. If something doesn’t change he will lose the war over here, only in part because of what is going on over there.

You wrote, “John appears to have the same problem with Iraq that the administration is having: admitting that any mistakes were made.” This is a point made often by Sen. Biden, which seems to me to be more of a political ploy than a sincere attempt to “reconnect” the public to the war effort.

I will dispute the extent to which it would do any good for the president to publicly state that “mistakes” have been made while the fight against the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaeda continues. There will be time for an overarching public assessment of what went wrong and right in Iraq; that time is not now. Which is not to say that tactics aren’t being adjusted all the time; they certainly are. But for the president to make a blanket, public statement, as Sen. Biden has called for him to do, would not now be strategically sound, IMO.

That’s my take on the “policy” of the matter.

The soldiers that fought in Vietnam and, to a large extent, the ones that now fight in Iraq, are indeed “hated” by the left, certainly if you figure the international component of the left into the equation. Again, revisit the recent, broad accusations about military “thuggery” and the certainty of the allegations of “massive war crimes” being committed by “US soldiers.” By this point, there have likely been close to half a million US soldiers rotated into and out of Iraq. How many have been accused of, tried and convicted of abuses? 20? 50? This is not to apologize for those criminals, but the entire military should not be smeared for the actions of a few deviants. yet it is, ongoingly and relentlessly.