Buchanan: Bush Bugging Out of Baghdad?

Vietnam is prologue. (From WorldNetDaily.)

Closely rereading the president's Tuesday address at Ft. Bragg calls to mind speeches I wrote, 35 years ago, for Richard M. Nixon.

While Bush continues to insist Iraq is the central front in the war on terror and will never be abandoned "on my watch," U.S. war policy is emerging as a 21st-century version of "Vietnamization."

For the president just wagered the ultimate success or failure of this mission on the ability of Iraqis themselves. "As the Iraqis stand up," said Bush, "we will stand down."

Clearly, the president has heard the message of an impatient country. His rhetoric has been reconfigured to conform to reality. His policy is moving toward that urged upon him by Republican Rep. Walter Jones, whose House resolution calls on the president to draft a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, but does not impose a hard timetable.

Bush appears to have begun to understand that for many Iraqis, the cause of this war – why they fight – is that we are there. They do not have to love Saddam to want Americans gone. And as President Bush has now told the Iraqis that we do not mean to stay, U.S. generals are back-channeling the Sunni insurgents to assure them we intend to leave – and that their real enemy is Zarqawi, al-Qaida and the foreign fighters, who intend to remain and start a civil war.

Not so very long ago, the neoconservatives were cawing, "On to Damascus!" and braying about Iraq becoming a U.S. strategic base camp flanking Iran and Syria. But, repeatedly at Ft. Bragg, Bush signaled that when our mission is complete, America will come home. "I recognize that Americans want our troops to come home as quickly as possible," he told the 82nd Airborne. "So do I."