I watched President Bush's speech tonight. He was less inspiring than usual. He looks tired. I also watched the Democratic response given by Senator Durbin, the guy who recently likened American soldiers to Nazi's. He was more enthusiastic, but he didn't have anything to say. He more or less gave the standard Democratic message, which is "whatever Bush is doing is wrong." I'm really disappointed in Democrats because they don't offer any approaches to winning; they just want to surrender. They want to force us to lose in Iraq to improve their political power here at home. The only way we can "lose" in Iraq is if we lose our national will. There is no way we can lose militarily. Guerilla wars are always long and discouraging. The Democrats won't even clearly say they want to surrender. They talk about a "symbolic' vote showing that they do not support Bush's plan. There again, they don't seem to have any alternative except surrender. This is a no cost exercize since no one remembers it or calls them to account if they are wrong. And they have been wrong a lot. Recently they were wrong about how difficult it would be in Afghanistan, particularly in the terrible winter. Senator Kennedy was totally wrong about what would happen after the Democrats cut off aid to the South Vietnamese back in 1975. He said not many people would die after a communist victory, but millions died. He is still proud of his actions. (A lot of Americans do not know what actually happened in Vietnam after the US military left in 1973. They don't know that the South decisively beat back an invasion from the North in 1974. But the Russians then rearmed the North while Democrats cut off military aid to the South, sealing the fate of the South in 1975.) It appears to me that the Democrats would like to do the same thing in Iraq. One big difference in the two situations is that the Vietnamese communists pressed the attack against other countries on their borders rather than us, until the Chinese forced them to stop in 1979; the Islamists want to attack us, and there is no big brother to stop them.