Frankly, I find some of their barbs bizarre:
Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants
Why does he need to explain that? The Iraqi army melted on the field, and the losers resorted to insurgency, because they didn't want to lose, and were sure we'd run away as soon as they killed enough of us. Ask the average John Q. Voter why the war in Iraq is still going on after two years, and I'll bet you'll get either that or "Because Our Evil President doesn't WANT it to, man!". Does the WaPo believe that anyone who thinks the latter will be convinced by having the former explained to them?
Or this:
When he did turn to Iraq's reconstruction Mr. Bush mostly described the bright side of a very mixed picture. While acknowledging that "our progress has been uneven," his dominant theme was success: in training Iraqi security forces, holding elections and promoting political accord. The progress he described is genuine, as is the reality that the United States has no reasonable alternative to continuing to support the construction of a representative Iraqi government. Mr. Bush rightly argued that a deadline for withdrawal would be a "serious mistake."
Followed by the rest of the piece, which chides Bush for not saying what commanders and senior aides and every newspaper from Sea to Shining Sea has been saying for months: that the insurgency doesn't appear to be going away just yet, and indeed, has remained roughly at the same level of efficiency for the last year. Again, why does the President need to explain this? We see it every day: Bomb kills 40, Three soldiers killed in ambush, and a partridge in a pear tree. WE KNOW the problems. The purpose of the President's conference was to argue why we should continue to stay the course.
Fortunately, most Americans appear to have a hardheaded appreciation of the problems and stakes in Iraq. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.
No, it's going to require Mr. Bush to continue to point out the "bright side of a very mixed picture." Let me offer a few examples:
In 1941, the two-year mark for World War II, the allied side was in very bad shape. Winston Churchill, more or less the only Western leader still resisting, did not rally his people by pointing out that France had fallen, that half of European Russia was overrun, that Rommel was running rampant in North Africa. The people already knew that. What he told them was that the enemy was monstrous, and that the British people would never surrender to a monster. He didn't tell them about the fact that we were going to start day-and-night bombing of Germany but let the Russians do the heavy lifting until we felt like starting a second front, or about the recent success against the enemy's Enigma code, because, although it might have cheered the Pommies, it would also have told Hitler exactly what he needed to do to win.
In 1863, the two-year mark for the American Civil War, the Lincoln administration had a very mixed picture of its own to deal with. In the Western theater, the Mississippi had been cleared of rebel forces, cutting the Confederacy in half, and the pressure soon to be brought to bear agains the remaining Confederate forces west of the Appalachians was deemed to be inexorable. But in the East, the Rebels had held out, and held out, and held out, embarrassing every Yankee general that could be summoned against them. Sure, they'd won at Gettysburg, but the cost of that battle was horrendous, and that a battle was being fought in Pennsylvania in the first place indicated that all was not well. How was Lincoln to keep the people with him? What could he say?
You know what he said. Read the Gettysburg Address and see if you can find a description of the new strategies to be employed, or candor about the problems faced. Read it with a critic's eye, and it's a masterpiece of vagueness (and more than a few did read it with such an eye. One snark referred to the speech as "the dishwater utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States"). Lincoln did not mention that most of the Union Army's three-year enlistments would be up the next spring, or that Confederate cavalry raiders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest were growing "increasingly sophisticated" in their assaults on union railroads, or that the most recent amphibious expedition against Charleston had failed. He also didn't say that his plan for the future was going to involve appointing his hardest-fighting general, a man alternately accused of being a drunken incompetent and a pitiless butcher, to the head of all Union forces, and direct him to cut down Lee's army, whatever the cost.
Instead, he told them that the were engaged in a war for the survival of their nation, that to lose would be the end of our forefather's beliefs, and that they must steel themselves for the coming struggle, must resolve that the sacrifice of their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers has not been in vain. Thus, Lincoln's candor, not in the tiny decisions that amount to policy, but in the broad meanings that the people, who care not for wonkery, will hear.
Look, if most of the anti-war crowd was as level-headed as the WaPo editorial staff, I'd be a lot less strident on this issue, which I know I said I would stay away from. But if they're so worried about the people not holding fast to a war they know we need to win, mayhaps they could get on board and get their front page to tell both sides of the very mixed picture. If they're stuck for how to get news on the progress they admit to be genuine, they can start here.
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