The President's Chance

As someone who still believes America can win the war for Iraq, I am hoping the president will announce today in his State of the Union that we cannot. Then I'd like to see him tell Congress that he now intends to withdraw American soldiers immediately, and that successive elections and the rule of law is a bridge too far for Iraqis.

Mr. Bush could unveil Operation Ask Nicely, a bold diplomatic surge whereby our commanders in the field will host a weekend retreat and ice cream social in Chestertown, Md., for the officers running Iran's Quds Force. "I believe we are one volleyball game away from peace with our enemies in Iraq," he could say.

Lest I sound sarcastic, I fear the president faces an opposition party content to let its political adversary do its thinking. So long as the president keeps saying Iraq is a war to be won, Democrats will insist it is a conflict to be resolved.

So long as the president says we need more troops, the Democrats will say we need fewer.

The once great big tent of Truman and Kennedy is a party of bickering national security contrarians. How else to explain the recent campaign against Mr. Bush's plan to send 21,500 reinforcements? Only a year ago it was fashionable for every Democrat and war critic to invoke the name of General Eric Shinseki and his truth to power moment before the war when he predicted we would need "several hundred thousand" troops. This was often done in high dudgeon against Paul Wolfowitz.

Well, guess what? Mr. Bush has at least rhetorically conceded this point. He fired the defense secretary and replaced the generals who were against sending more troops. Today, no Democrat enters a television studio without talking points quoting those generals who helped plot the course they said the president can no longer stay. But Democrats should know better anyway — the 21,500 more GIs represent nothing more than the extension of tours and acceleration of deployments. That's not even a surge, let alone an escalation.

Then there is the Democratic plea for more talking. On this one, Mr. Bush should remind them of how, only 13 months ago, his State Department pressed Iraqi leaders to attend an Arab League summit that included representatives of Sunni car bombers and how his spies have met in Damascus and Amman for the last two years with leaders of this misnamed insurgency. "These were the right decisions then and they are right decisions now," he could say.

Expanding on this theme, the president should recall the progress the civilized world has made in its outreach to Tehran's terror clerics. He could point to Ambassador Khalilzad's offer in November 2005 to talk to his Iranian counterpart, to Secretary Rice's offer last June to join discussions with Iran on their nuclear program, and to the European openings to Ali Larijani. He could end this section of the speech by saying he would rule out any attack on Iran.

Now there are good reasons as to why the Democrats are so incoherent about the war. Their foreign policy masks an uneasy alliance between the party's anti-war left that resents and seeks to restrain American power, and Bush I "realists" who seek to define and wield the nation's power as ruthlessly as possible. Call it the McGovern-Scowcroft pact. It's based on disagreement about big questions on American hegemony and agreement on smaller ones, such as the United Nations, Israel, and the venality of neoconservatives.

Hence Secretary of State Baker today is more influential among congressional Democrats than Secretary of State Albright. The George W. Bush presidency is the only thing that can bring these two tribes together. Anti-war Democrats opposed what they saw as a preemptive war for oil, whereas the realist critics of the war opposed it because they couldn't understand what Iraqi freedom had to do with our national interest. A war for oil is just the sort of thing realists say nations ought to be fighting.

The Democratic Party's current predicament has made for some comical moments. Remember Mr. Kerry in 2004 quoting the memoirs of George H.W. Bush about Iraq to George W. Bush in the second debate. Moveon.org quoted Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft in their anti-Iraq war literature in 2002. If only the net roots knew that a generation earlier their predecessors had pressed their new allies to be brought before a war crimes tribunal.

Sooner or later the Democratic alliance will fall apart. The left wing will demand America stand up for the rights of Third World women and political prisoners, while the realist wing will caution such wild fantasies will cause instability. In the meantime, Mr. Bush could take advantage of the fact that the only thing on which these strange bedfellows agree is their opposition to what he supports.