Bush

The striking thing when listening to the left these days is how hard it is for them to get past Bush. Reaction to the speech last night was predictable from their side, they dismissed it out of hand. They've lost any confidence they had in his ability to lead, so that's fair enough. What strikes me is the petty things they watch for.

• How was his tone?
• Did he smirk?
• Could anything he said have been intrepreted as 'disagreement is unpatriotic'?
• Did he apologize enough? How much crow did he eat?

That's it. Hardly any analysis of what he actually had to say or whether or not it could work. Just pettiness.
When Clinton used force in Kosovo, there were many conservative critics that warned of the possible dire consequences of those actions. (Interestingly, their criticism was correct - if applied to Iraq.) Some of their objections were obviously based on partisanship and mistrust of Clinton's leadership. But they never based important decisions on his body language.
What do I think of the plan? I don't know. I've been proven so wrong on many other things in Iraq that I don't really know the way forward. I suspect that the way out of this is to just ride out the sectarian violence. It was inevitable, and frankly we were blind to it. But 'inevitable' doesn't mean eternal. It will subside.
Stopping arms from Iran and Syria would also help. That's a military problem and frankly one that I think is doable. Our political will is probably not there though, so it probably won't happen.