Webloggin » So What Would You Do?

Me: So, what did you think of the President’s 9/11 speech?
My son’s friend: That was terrible, wasn’t it?
Me: What did the President say that he should not have said and what did he not say that he should have said?
My son’s friend: Uh, I didn’t really listen that close, but I heard on NPR that it was really bad.

There followed a quite interesting discussion in which, in the end, we both agreed that Bush was doing all he could do, but not communicating it very well.

Along the way, my son’s friend parroted what I consider a brilliant Democrat party line. The Democrats, who have heretofore been rightly accused of having no idea what to do, have hit upon a winning line — “America should either commit whatever resources are necessary to win the war in Iraq or they should get out.” This is brilliant, because it will absolutely resonate with folks like me, who made the exact same argument (in my case as a teenager) relative to Vietnam.

But there is a fundamental difference between Vietnam and Iraq. In Vietnam, we stuck our noses in the middle of a civil war. There was no danger to the United States from a withdrawal, in which we basically admitted we shouldn’t have been involved to begin with. The Viet Cong were not about to start launching planes into our skyscrapers. In Iraq, quitting will have far more serious consequences.

I opposed our entry into Iraq when we entered Iraq (as Bookworm will testify) but I will admit that the one great benefit of our war in Afganistan and Iraq is that it has kept our enemies quite busy launching attacks over there, rather than on American soil.

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