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" His heart wasn&amp;#039;t in it, and who can blame him? After all the fine talk about the greatness of our country and the bravery of our troops, after the gracious nod to President Bush and the ask-not-what-you-can-do moment when he asked us to Whip Recession Now just like soldiers fighting terrorism, it came down to this line:      There&amp;#039;s no upbeat spin you can put on that, but it was still a bit shocking to hear Obama&amp;#039;s litany of retreat. &amp;quot;Tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over... we have removed nearly 100,000 U.S. troops from Iraq. We have closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis. And we have moved millions of pieces of equipment out of Iraq... U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq&amp;#039;s cities last summer... all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year ...&amp;quot; In one odd bit of sloppiness, he repeated the same rationale twice in close succession. First he said that &amp;quot;the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country,&amp;quot; then, a few paragraphs later: &amp;quot;This completes a transition to Iraqi responsibility for their own security.&amp;quot; He seemed to want to hammer the point \u2014 it&amp;#039;s your turn now, guys. We&amp;#039;ll see whether they can handle it. But Obama faced the hard task head-on. That was the main thing. All the other things he said struck me as prudent and cautious, his usual mix of liberal idealism and a martial attitude to the national interest that still seems surprisingly conservative. But how could you hear those words and not think of the helicopters on the roof of the Saigon embassy? How could you hear them and not feel sadness at the thought of another bloody American failure that follows exactly the same hubristic pattern as the last one: 90 percent domestic politics and zero basis in the realities of the country we have found ourselves driven to invade. For this reason, I was astonished to see Bill Kristol&amp;#039;s reaction in the Weekly Standard:  A Note to My Fellow Hawks: It wasn&amp;#039;t a bad speech. Bill Kristol! William the Bloody, as certain bloggers have taken to calling him. It turns out he was very pleased with the Bush nod, no surprise, and also with Obama&amp;#039;s positive take on &amp;quot;the fact that we sustained the combat mission for over seven years.&amp;quot; Obama went &amp;quot;about as far as an anti-Iraq war president could go in praising the war effort,&amp;quot; Kristol said. Brushing aside the &amp;quot;pedestrian&amp;quot; pep talk about the economy, he singled out for special praise Obama&amp;#039;s rather awkward final flourish about troops that are the steel in our ship of state traveling a true course through rough waters with confidence that &amp;quot;in the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Not a bad tribute to the troops,&amp;quot; Kristol writes, &amp;quot;and not a bad statement of the importance and indispensability of hard power.&amp;quot; Either Kristol is displaying unusual fair-mindedness, or he&amp;#039;s astonishingly desperate to salvage whatever pathetic shred of victory that might justify the $1 trillion national disaster he so relentlessly cheered. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8344/obama-speech-august-31-video-2092058/>