I like him. He’s a serious, sober guy. But I don’t see how his strategic goals set out in his speech yesterday–keeping Iraq from being a safe haven from terrorists; keeping the sectarian strife in Iraq from destabilizing the region; checking Iranian ambitions in the region; and protecting U.S. credibility–would be furthered by his vague proposal for a strategic re-deployment. In fact, his re-deployment would almost certainly harm us in all those areas. What he is basically saying is that the war is lost, and all the rest of it–a diplomatic offensive, forging progress on the Arab-Israeli conflict, etc.–is window-dressing. A big reason he says we can’t win is “the timetable imposed by our own domestic political process.” Lugar is of course part of the “domestic political process,” and he will now do more than his fair share to impose that timetable.

A couple of political observations: 1) John Warner is probably kicking himself because he wanted to be the first Republican senate luminary to break with Bush; 2) Lugar will be deified by the media and liberal pundit class in coming days; 3) The Democrats will rush to embrace Lugar. Don’t be surprised if there isn’t a Lugar-Biden resolution sometime soon; 4) Many Republicans will be awfully tempted to go Lugar’s way, because it offers a third way between the surge and withdrawal that promises–most importantly for them–a way to try to dodge voter anger over the war; 5) The forces within the Bush administration that want to begin to scale-back our commitment will get a boost.

In sum, Lugar’s speech is substantively lacking, but could well mark a significant political moment.