IT'S NOT OUR FAULT

The President just gave the nation a pep talk on Iraq. The gist of the talk seemed to be that the American people are becoming the problem. We don’t have the fortitude to persevere for the long haul. We lack the insight to see that all of the Administration’s actions were made necessary by 9/11. And most important, in questioning the conduct of the war in Iraq, we are letting down our men and women in uniform.

To make up for our shortcomings, we need to look for ways to express support for our troops. We need to fly the flag on July 4. And implicitly, we need to stop questioning the competence of our leaders.

Well, I’m not buying it. It is not the American people who are letting down our troops but our civilian leaders. As an example of the ineptitude with which the war in Iraq has been waged, the President said in his speech that if his generals said they needed more troops, he would give them more troops. But shortly before or after that statement, he said more troops were not the answer because more troops would send a message to the Iraqis that we were never leaving.

The issue at this stage should not be whether the war in Iraq was necessary. That Rubicon has been crossed. Let the historians, and the presidential candidates in 2008, rehash that matter. The issue today is whether we are pursuing our national goals, including our goals in Iraq, in a competent manner. Another Republican president in another time of national testing was not afraid to punish failure by making changes. Abraham Lincoln went through several generals before he finally found one, Grant, who could get the job done.

George Bush needs to take a similar approach. His team has made a number of mistakes in the war in Iraq. Instead of blaming the American people, he should look at the architects of those mistakes. And the primary architect is the Secretary of Defense. If George Bush really wants to get the American people back on his side, as they were in those months following September 11, 2001, he should start by firing Donald Rumsfeld.

DSH