Republicans love to talk about how anyone criticizing the war is sending the “wrong message.” For example, Fred Thompson, the new contender for the Republican nomination, said recently that Democrats in Congress are sending a “mixed message” by criticizing Bush and “if we look weak and divided in this country, we’re going to pay a heavy price for it in the future.”
In the first place, if Thompson objects to mixed messages, why isn’t he criticizing the president who announced he was going to take down Osama bin Laden, then let that slide so we could invade Iraq? What could be a more mixed message than that?
In the second place, why is it that the only unmixed message war supporters can conceive of is staying in Iraq? Can’t they imagine some alternative message that would be plain and unmixed?
Here, I’ll help: “We’re withdrawing from Iraq rather than wasting our military resources in a war that has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. Bin Laden will no longer be able to use our occupation as a fund-raising and a recruiting tool, or to make it look as if we’re fighting Islam rather than terrorism.
“We’re going to rebuild the power we’ve used over there and reconstitute our military so that if another terrorist attack comes down, we have the military resources to use if force, rather than law-enforcement, is the appropriate response. And no-one, inside our outside the country, will distract or weaken us by convincing us to fight a needless, gratuitous war ever again.”

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