Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The President's Speech Later Today   [Andy McCarthy]

President Bush's speech today will be very important.  The administration has done a bad job of explaining why Iraq is vital to success in the overall war against jihadists.  But, as Dan Henninger argued in the WSJ last week, the London planes plot is a new opportunity to remind the country that (a) our enemies still desperately want to kill us, and (b) al Qaeda, which was in cahoots with Saddam long before the U.S. invasion, regards Iraq as a crucial battle.  That's what the war in Iraq is about.

I am not looking to provoke another Corner debate about the merits or demerits of the Democracy Project.  My limited point here is that while Americans are ambivalent, at best, about that initiative, they remain united on the need to defeat al Qaeda. 

If the president is going to galvanize support, including resuscitating the vigor of supporters who fear the administration has lost focus, he has to make the case that being in Iraq is about crushing jihadists, and that leaving before that is done would be a major victory for al Qaeda — regardless of what kind of government(s) Iraq ends up with.  Even those who were opposed to the Iraq invasion, as well as supporters who've grown weary of the second Bush term's diplomacy-at-all-costs approach, presumably believe that an al Qaeda victory is unacceptable.  The phased-withdrawal approach favored by many Democrats would be a victory for al Qaeda ... although, so would "staying the course" if "the course" does not mean redoubling our efforts to win (meaning, to defeat jihadists and their state sponsors, not prop up Maliki).

It will also be interesting to note the President's language.  Recently, he finally began referring to "Islamic fascism" as our enemy.  There have been some reports that, after energetic protest from CAIR and other Muslim activist groups, the administration will dial back and drop references to Islam from its rhetoric. 

This would be demoralizing to many of the president's supporters.  It would be indicative of a failure to come to grips with what is actually driving the enemy, which is an interpretation of Islam that is much more mainstream than the administration has acknowledged.  And it would further show that undue influence is being wielded by organizations that do not have our best national security interests at heart (CAIR, a tireless administration critic, is for example, one of the plaintiffs in the Michigan suit against the NSA's terrorist surveillance program).  Let's hope the president sticks to his guns.

09/05 10:36 AMShare