Bill Kristol has an article in the Weekly Standard arguing that, contrary to what Bob Woodward is asserting, it isn't President Bush who is in denial, but Democrats. Money quote:
[…] The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.
Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory. (If, as Woodward reports, he's been bolstered in that view by Henry Kissinger, then good for Henry. Invite him to the Oval Office more often!) To that end, Bush should do more. He should send substantially more troops and insist on a change of strategy to allow a real counterinsurgency and prevent civil war. But at least he's staying and fighting. And the great majority of Republicans are standing with him. The Democrats, as Bush has put it, "offer nothing but criticism and obstruction, and endless second-guessing. The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut-and-run."
So there really is a profound difference between the parties, as Democrats are happy to acknowledge, since they think Iraq is a winning issue for them. The Democratic talking point is this: We're against Bush on Iraq, but we are as resolute as Bush in the real war on terror (understood by them to exclude Iraq). Except that they're not.[…] But it remains the case that a vote for Democrats is a vote for congressional leaders committed to kinder and gentler treatment of terrorists (emphasis added).
It is fascinating and disturbing to see how good Neocons are at denying reality and at framing the issue in terms of toughness and cowardice as if their policies have been successful for the last six years. Neocons are very good at pretending that they are still a rebellious minority without any power and at disparaging them by arguing that the people who don’t agree with them don’t understand the world as if their understanding of the world has made it a better place. I am getting sick and tired of Bill Kristol and of the standoffish way with which he expresses his absolute truths when he should have learned to show some humility, given the fact that he has been proven wrong so many times. In the Neocons’ little world what matter aren't results and facts, but rather moral clarity, resolve, and toughness. Thus, it doesn’t matter if Bush is losing their war in Iraq as long as he keeps pointing out that “Islamofascists” want the United States to fail and as long as he vows to keep following the master plan to make Iraq a democracy so that it can change the Middle East. The scariest thing about this kind of arguments is that it is impossible to engage with the people making them for they have a simplistic and very dangerous vision, according to which there is evil in the world and that those who are on the side of the good are allowed to fight it by any means necessary. Twenty years from now, Bill Kristol will still be arguing that he is right and that America just needs to keep at it, to keep being tough against the world, which will eventually thank it for saving it from the bad guys. But of course, we all know that Rambo cannot succeed in our world and that bad actions and errors of judgments have consequences, which morals and ideals can neither erase nor overcome without acknowledging and accepting the lessons from the hard and humbling realities of failures.
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