Just so. “If our resolve were absolutely without question,” we wouldn’t NEED to make declarations like that! It’s just because our resolve is questionable that we need to; yet for the same reason, we can’t. Catch-22. And besides (or perhaps not so besides), no-one has the authority to make such a declaration on behalf of us, the people.

And while it is true that the widespread dissatisfaction with the war is an encouragement to our enemies, there is utterly nothing to be done about this. The GWB doctrine that getting a democratic Iraq up and running is vital to future U.S. security, simply hasn’t been bought by the American people. It’s not that it’s been badly sold; it’s (a) that it is not obviously true in itself–we have had too much experience in the past few decades of getting along very comfortably with gangster regimes, and in fact are getting along famously with some right now–and (b) there is widespread skepticism that Iraq is capable of consensual government, or even of holding together as a nation without some gangster-dictator like Saddam in charge.

Whatever you think of those opinions yourself, they are not bizarrely fantastic, and events confirm them at least as often as they refute them. Absent a major new attack on our soil (which God forbid), the American people are not going to close ranks behind the admin’s policy. If there were such an attack, they might even close ranks behind a position saying: “All those efforts in Iraq didn’t help a bit–what was the point?”

The American people are simply not with the administration on this. Even when I talk with war supporters–recently, with Melanie Morgan on KSFO–they don’t bring forward the GWB doctrine to justify themselves. Most commony they just make a moral case: Saddam was bad, we had a moral duty to bring him down. We have a moral duty to help Iraq get good government. GWB would say: “Yes, it’s the right thing to do; AND NOT ONLY IS IT RIGHT, but it’s also in our geopolitical interests.” People don’t buy that second clause, though; and the appeal of the first, even to such an intensely morality-conscious people as us, is being steadily eroded by Iraqi sluggishness and misbehavior, and by weariness with a war in which progress is not apparent.