This reader captures it well, I think:
I too share your skepticism with the "surge" and am tired of witnessing almost four years of mis-managed war, so I am hardly sympathetic to Bush or his plan. However, Jim Webb, while speaking very eloquently and forcefully, contradicted himself by first saying that America would not precipitously withdraw from Iraq, but then later saying we should responsibly redeploy so that American troops would be out of Iraq "in short order". Maybe it’s me, but one sounds like the other.
I realize this president has put us in the situation we are in, but in choosing between giving the surge time to work or pulling out of Iraq in short order, I’m choosing the former (reluctantly). One thing Bush did effectively was lay out the consequences of abandoning of Iraq, and I don’t think the Democrats’ position laid out by Webb addresses this reality by advocating a quick withdrawal.
I’ve been talking about the war during this SOTU with CNN’s Iraq correspondent, Michael Ware. He too fears that withdrawal of any kind right now could unleash almighty hell in the region. But he recognizes, as I think we all must, that the current strategy cannot work either. "Plus Up" is a euphemism for hoping for the best. It’s less a strategy than a wish.
At this point, the forces necessary to bring order to Iraq – to "shape the outcome" toward victory, in the president’s words – are probably in the region of several hundred thousand more. Victory, in the president’s terminology, probably requires a draft – or a much more drastic increase in military spending and manpower than is now planned. I think the reason Americans are so negative toward this president is that they intuitively know that he has not provided the resources to win. He still hasn’t. And his administration does not have a scintilla of the skill to manage the situation in their absence. And so we are at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Hence the unease, which the president just did nothing to dispel.
The Dish 