The Speech....

Purely in terms of tone, I gave it a 7 out of 10. It was appropriately sober, had flecks of realism, and -- a notable and welcome surprise -- even left out the customary "May God bless the United States" at the end. And the substance? Look, we can go round and round about whether this will work, should work, could have worked a year ago, would work without Hollywood's treason or the French, or might work if only we'd "Get Syrious" and order those designer coffee-sipping troops of ours to get off their butts and start fighting, as Michael Ledeen's Dolchstoss-tinged argument goes here.

It's an inescapable irony that the greater the President's stridency in describing what's at stake in Iraq, the more obvious the "resource gap" becomes. If astronomers warned that a planet-killing asteroid was sure to collide with Earth next year, I don't doubt that Bush's deflection strategy would entail launching an impressive array of bottle rockets from the White House roof. (If there are any cartoonists out there, you have your next project; send it to me and I'll post it). Purely in terms of our force level and its relation to his own rhetoric, Bush has done the equivalent of sending the Capitol Hill police to take Normandy in 1944. Nothing he said tonight changed that -- on the contrary, it just became more obvious.

Since it's clear we're now in a holding pattern until Bush dumps this mess on the next administration, expect thousands more U.S. troops to be killed over the next few years and tens of thousands more wounded. Almost two years ago, at the exact same time some self-anointed experts and opiners like this one proclaimed "We're Winning", I made this post about a childhood friend of mine serving in Iraq who warned of the low troop morale and the "FUBAR clusterfuck" we were in. He was spot-on as it turned out, and an infinitely better source than those dubious "the media isn't showing the schools we've been painting" missives trumpeted by the usual suspects. He's now out of the Army, but stays in touch with friends still serving in Iraq. Recently he told me that troop morale is at rock-bottom now, lower than ever, and dejection is turning ominously into anger.

After almost four years, the burden of proof is on this war's supporters, the pollyannas, and the enablers. At this point if you're not against the war and the perpetual occupation it entails, then you are for it. And if you're against it, the only responsible course now is protest. Part of that, of course, means making it clear to your elected representatives that you're watching what they say and do, and you'll be voting accordingly.