Heard about this speech on the news so dug it up. It’s a good one. From the Whitehouse, a few important points. First being we need to support the troops.

The influx of foreign fighters and foreign support makes this job a lot tougher — tougher on the Iraqis, tougher on our troops. We can expect more casualties as our forces enter enemy strongholds and push back against foreign interference. But General Petraeus and our commanders in Iraq have carefully laid out a plan that our forces are executing on the ground. It’s a well conceived plan by smart military people, and we owe them the time and we owe them the support they need to succeed.

And look who he is holding up as a success, Israel. Might not play well in the Muslim world seeing as it is Israel. But one can’t deny Israel is a functioning democracy.

Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing into the evening news. No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street. In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in similar attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy that is not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq: the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens, and function as a democracy even amid violence.

He goes on to detail just what would happen if we were to leave Iraq and it’s not pretty.

And so if we withdraw before the Iraqi government can defend itself, we would yield the future of Iraq to terrorists like al Qaeda — and we would give a green light to extremists all throughout a troubled region.

The consequences for America and the Middle East would be disastrous. In Iraq, sectarian violence would multiply on a horrific scale. Fighting could engulf the entire region in chaos. We would soon face a Middle East dominated by Islamic extremists who would pursue nuclear weapons, who would use their control of oil for economic blackmail, and who would be in a position to launch new attacks on the United States of America.

On that, I agree. Speech deserves reading. Bush may have dropped the ball on immigration but he is right on target in the war against Islamic extremists.