Speaking Truth To Power: Gingrich on Bush's Failure

If the Bush administration has suffered from a failure of thought – and it has –his Democrat opponents are suffering from a failure of will. Newt Gingrich examines both in a short, devastating analysis.

Gingrich's analysis is devastating because it is true. The Democrat analysis is impotent because it is not true. It is not true on a very elemental level, because it is a pretense that if America retreats from the jihadists, it will suffer no permanent loss in lives and honor.

Despite Democrat propaganda to the contrary, there is evidence that the surge has been at least partially successful.

There are two reasons for this: 1) The increase in troops has provided in some embattled areas of Iraq shelter from the storm of foreign terrorists, and 2) the jihadists clearly have overplayed their hand, as may be seen in this report from Jack Kelly.

But the limited success of the surge can only mean that Bush’s early strategy – low troop levels, a diminished American presence – was a horrific failure. Democrats cannot point to that failure without acknowledging the partial success of the surge. And they cannot do this while insisting that troops should be precipitously withdrawal from Iraq.

Democrats are caught, in other words, in the inextricable toils of their own campaign rhetoric. That rhetoric is the Gordian knot that must be cut if Americans are to have a just appreciation of the truth – the unpleasant, unalterable truth.