Because I'm Basically an Optimist

Instapundit notes four presidential speeches about bombing Iraq. The theme is that we clearly haven't gotten the job done because this keeps happening. I have a different take.

Yes, just comparing the speeches shows that the first three were serious endeavors while the last by President Obama was just a time-limited, scope-limited military action speech--with a shout out to Ebola since a planned three-year fight was viewed as insufficient to interrupt prime time TV, apparently.

But I'm an optimist at heart.

Note that President Obama gave the first speech that announced our bombing at the side of an imperfect Iraqi government against beastly jihadis rather than the first three who announced the bombing of a perfectly beastly Saddam regime.

More importantly, note that the first three presidents emphasized the WMD threat that Iraq posed to the world. President Obama did not need to mention WMD in connection to Iraq and had to mention Ebola for an equally scary (and irrelevant to the mission at hand) threat.

Funny about the WMD angle given all that the anti-war side has said since 2003 about the false threat from Saddam's Iraq of WMD.

So despite worries that President Obama isn't up to the military task he has announced, take heart that the degree of difficulty and danger is far lower than the first three presidents faced.

I really am an optimist.