The President recognizes this basic fact that so many critics seem unable to grasp:
In the last two years, we've seen the desire for liberty in the broader Middle East -- and we have been sobered by the enemy's fierce reaction. In 2005, the world watched as the citizens of Lebanon raised the banner of the Cedar Revolution, they drove out the Syrian occupiers and chose new leaders in free elections. In 2005, the people of Afghanistan defied the terrorists and elected a democratic legislature. And in 2005, the Iraqi people held three national elections, choosing a transitional government, adopting the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world, and then electing a government under that constitution. Despite endless threats from the killers in their midst, nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity that we should never forget. (Applause.)
A thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics, and in 2006 they struck back. In Lebanon, assassins took the life of Pierre Gemayel, a prominent participant in the Cedar Revolution. Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon's legitimately elected government. In Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters tried to regain power by regrouping and engaging Afghan and NATO forces. In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia -- and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads. The result was a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day.
This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in. Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. (Applause.) Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory. (Applause.)
We're carrying out a new strategy in Iraq -- a plan that demands more from Iraq's elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission. Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.
We had successes in 2005, and in 2006 we've had setbacks in a new environment. We first hoped the Iraqis could contain the new problem through the early summer, then tried to subdue Baghdad under the existing combat parameters at the end of the summer, and now we are committed to a different approach that recognizes that Sadr and his foreign patrons must be confronted and destroyed.
New primary enemy. New strategy. It is very simple. Yet the so-called intellectual superiors of our President either cannot accept this or do not recognize this fact as the basis of debate.
Victor Hanson too speaks of different wars in Iraq, though he takes a broader view than my discussion of war phases since 2003 (and I personally prefer to call the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 as the First Gulf War).
But whether we are speaking of the changes from 2005 to 2006 as the President did (who also spoke more broadly than just Iraq), the broad sweep of the conflict with Iraq since 1991 as Victor Hanson does, or the changes in the Iraq War since 2003 as I did, the common thread is that in Iraq we faced a new threat in 2006--after the February Samarra bombing.
As 2007 begins, we are embarking on a new approach to defeating this new threat. It is not the war we entered in 2003. But it is the war we are in now.
How can the opponents of the war blindly insist nothing is different? How can they fail to see how we have faced past threats and are now facing a new threat?
It's almost as if they just want us to lose this war. But that couldn't be true, could it?
We've done much. We have more to do. We must not throw away the victory that we are achieving.
UPDATE: Dennis Byrne doesn't understand the inability of some to see what is different in our current plan:
How can so many people--Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), the Boston Globe, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, anti-war senators and on and on--be so ignorant about such a simple concept?
They are acting as if President George W. Bush's "new strategy" in Iraq is just to "escalate the war" by sending in 20,000 more troops. As anyone one notch above simpleminded ought to be able to understand, the core of Bush's new strategy is about how to fight the enemy.
Ah yes, the nuanced thinking skills of the reality-debased community.
