Murtha Loses One for the Gipper

John Podhoretz writes today in the New York Post about the positive impact Rep. Jack Murtha had on the war in Iraq...not by galvanizing the opposition, but by forcing the president to make the speech he made yesterday and eloquently stating the case for finishing the work:

GOD bless Jack Murtha. Yesterday we saw how this old patriot, ex-Marine and current Democratic congressman once again came to the aid of his country as he did 40 years ago in Vietnam. Thanks to Jack, President Bush — in a speech at the Naval Academy yesterday morning — spent 40 minutes explaining to the American people that our goal in Iraq is nothing less than "unconditional victory" against the forces of reaction, rejection and Islamic fascism.

"To achieve victory over such enemies," he said, "we are pursuing a comprehensive strategy in Iraq. Americans should have a clear understanding of this strategy — how we look at the war, how we see the enemy, how we define victory and what we're doing to achieve it." And in painstaking detail, he explained it all.

Bush offered chapter and verse on the progress that has been made in Iraq over the past year in "standing up" the Iraqi army — the necessary precondition for any reduction in American troop levels.

The American people, he said, "want to see our troops win, and they want to see our troops come home as soon as possible. And those are my goals as well. I will settle for nothing less than complete victory."

These were words this country and the world desperately needed to hear, and chances are they would never have been spoken were it not for Jack Murtha. And so what if that isn't what Jack Murtha wanted? So what if the Bush speech propounds an approach and a vision exactly the opposite of what Murtha wants?

Life is just chock full of delicious little ironies like this.
[...]

"Immediate withdrawal" was the essence of the Murtha position, though Democrats screamed and yelled and hollered bitterly that Murtha's own proposal was just so much more nuanced than that.
The House GOP gambit was a pivotal moment because, in the end, Democrats just couldn't do it. They couldn't bring themselves to embrace the logic of their own position. Only three of them — out of 202 — voted for immediate withdrawal.

Almost instantly, you could feel the nature of the debate shift, and the political crisis over Iraq start to quiet a bit. Presented with the irresponsible and defeatist option advocated by Murtha, even Murtha himself couldn't cast a vote for it.

Suddenly, withdrawal was off the table. But Murtha had demonstrated something important: In the absence of a constantly echoed positive line of argument about the U.S. role in Iraq, over time the debate will be framed by the war's opponents in a way injurious to the overall goal of prevailing over the enemy.

Had Bush been talking about victory throughout 2005, had he informed the American people over and over that we are in Iraq to win, he might not have found himself with a distressed and disillusioned American public sorry we had gone in there in the first place.

Evidently, what he and the rest of the GOP needed was for Jack Murtha to go out there and lose one for the Gipper.

And we also have Murtha to thank for Nancy Pelosi's unconditional surrender statement of yesterday, thus placing the Dem leadership firmly in the position of promoting defeat.

Nice move, Jack!