NY Daily News: Americans Aren't Buying What Bush and Rice Are Selling

Here:

Bush & Rice make new Iraq pitches but Americans aren't buying.

Over the last weeks, the White House quietly has been trying out a new argument on Iraq. Aimed at shoring up public support, the tactic compares the difficulties there with historic conflicts, such as World War II and the battle against communism.
What Iraq shares with those periods, the argument goes, are bouts of doubt and confusion followed by victory - if we are resolute and patient.

It's a good argument, but not good enough. My bet is that it's too late and has too many holes in it to be persuasive for those sick of the carnage in Iraq.

The first peek at the new approach came Sept. 30, when Secretary of State Rice linked Iraq to history's "extraordinary times" in a speech at Princeton University. Then, last Thursday, President Bush picked up the theme in Washington, where he compared Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists to Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.

Rice was more thoughtful and less bellicose, but her audience, drawn mostly from the Woodrow Wilson graduate school, responded politely but unenthusiastically. Although her office billed the speech as major, it did not get wide attention, so parts of it are worth repeating here.

Citing setbacks the free world suffered in the first five years after World War II - the division of Germany, the Communist victory in China, the Soviet atomic bomb, the Korean War - she put our choice in stark terms.

"If we quit now, we will abandon Iraq's democrats at their time of greatest need. We will embolden every enemy of liberty and democracy across the Middle East. ... If we abandon future generations in the Middle East to despair and terror, we also condemn future generations in the United States to insecurity and fear."