President Bush gave his speech tonight, and I thought he did rather well in addressing the present situation in Iraq, and proposing a change in course that has at its heart one important goal: we must win in Iraq. But the Democrats in Congress wasted no time in expressing their goal: they want to lose.

They have already said that we have lost in Iraq. Granted, this is not half-time, this is not even the third quarter; this is the fourth quarter, and defeat may be a possibility, but the game is not over. Please forgive the football analogy, but it is a good analogy in that a game is not over until it is over. But of course, this is not a game, this is real life, with real lives on the line. And unlike a football game, it is not just the players whose lives are on the line, it is all of us. We all stand to lose if our troops are forced to lose in Iraq. It is the fourth quarter, but not yet the two-minute warning, and a lot can be done to turn this conflict around, and ultimately achieve an honorable victory. But rather than stand and fight, the Democrats in Congress have given up. After calling for more troops, they reject that notion now, because they want to treat this a political football, and the game they want to win is the White House in 2008.

Let's take a look at some of their specific reactions to the President's speech.

Dick Durbin, the House Majority Whip, called for the "orderly" withdrawal of troops from Iraq to send the Iraqis the message that the United States will not perpetually back them militarily." (CNN.com) His rebuttal statement included the following:

"It's time to begin the orderly redeployment of our troops so that they can begin coming home soon. When the Iraqis understand that America is not giving an open-ended commitment of support, when they understand that our troops indeed are coming home, then they will understand the day has come to face their own responsibility to protect and defend their nation."

And what if they don't? Dick Durbin doesn't seem to care. Like Ted Kennedy, he is prepared to just walk away from Iraq and let the Iraqi people fall into whatever abyss the terrorist elements can create for them. With disdain and impatience, he is willing to to suggest that they can help themselves without our aid, or all just be subjugated and slaughtered like the people in Cambodia in the late seventies. When he calls for the "orderly" withdrawal of our troops, it is to send a "message." What will that message be? It won't be that they have to help themselves; it will be a message more like this: we came into your country and liberated you from your dictator, but now we just don't have the will to see it through. We are the paper tiger Osama bin laden has called us, and after coaxing you to rise up and vote in your first ever Democratic election, we are going to take our ball and go home, because some of us think we are losing.

Durbin also was quoted as saying:

"If there's any surge that's needed in Iraq it's a surge in diplomacy..."

He wants to negotiate, but who is he going to negotiate with? Diplomacy? With whom? Negotiating with terrorists has never worked before, why does he think it's going to work now? Like Neville Chamberlain, he wishes to work a deal with extremist killers so that he can return home and proclaim that peace can be achieved without war. And like so many of his Democratic colleagues, he never addresses the consequences of such capitulation in the face of real threats.

Another Democratic Illinois Senator, Barack Obama, echoed the sentiment, as CNN.com reports:

"Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, often mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, told CNN's "Larry King Live" that he "didn't see any political strategy in the president's remarks to get Sunni and Shia to arrive at the political accommodation" necessary for peace. Obama said he would rather see troops redeployed to "Afghanistan and other areas where we can fight the battle against terrorism and al Qaeda."

Both Durbin and Obama have a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences of their proposals, and neither addresses the reality of the situation. Both propose a solution that admits defeat in Iraq before the outcome has truly been decided. They are armchair quarterbacks, men who cannot objectively assess our position in this war, making statements that are targeted to do nothing to win the conflict so that they can say that it's not their fault, and look good to their friends and supporters. Let's lose the game and blame it all on the quarterback, and maybe one of the guys we like and support can take over for him in the next one.

To underscore their armchair quarterbacking, these and other Democrats are undertaking a vote on a resolution opposing the President's plan. They are actively undermining our effort to stand and make a final try at winning this war. One of their chief arguments is "This is not what the American people voted for." And that statement, more than any other, sums up why they are the wrong people to make an accurate assessment of how to win this conflict. They truly believe that strategic thinking and planning are not the way to achieve victory, they believe that whatever the majority of the American people seem to want is the basis for making the decisions in such an important conflict. They reveal that they truly are driven by polls rather than logic. If the polls suggest Americans want this, that's what they would do. If they want that, then let's do that. Nowhere do they ever address that victory and success are not driven by the desires of the majority; victory and success are created by men with a single-minded purpose to succeed, and men who are willing to take risks and bear the cost. President Bush has shown that he wants to succeed and is willing to bear the cost of whatever legacy history has for him. Democrats just want to be friends with everyone and win the next election--but not the war in Iraq.