I didn't watch President Bush's speech tonight, opting instead to read it. There is a lot of promising things in the body of the speech, and I am quite confident that U.S. and Iraqi forces will be able accomplish the goals set forth for them in Baghdad. I still have one major reservation, though: There is no dagger to the insurgency's heart in this plan. When forces move through Baghdad, they will kill and capture many insurgents and terrorists but many will slip away. As our forces make progress in Baghdad, the rest of the terrorists and insurgents will fall back and filter out of the city. They will take a little bit of time to regroup, implement new tactics of their own, and the violence in Iraq will escalate again.
The President's speech indicates that we will cut off outside support for these groups. We will need to be highly effective at it. Since it doesn't look like we will be delivering a knockout punch to the insurgency, if we don't starve them of their support this will be little more than a short term fix to a problem that will re-emerge after a short time.
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