Bush Nostalgia

When President Obama speaks from the Oval Office tonight about the final withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, you'd think most Republicans would remain silent, or if not, focus on Afghanistan or even Iran as the locus for a renewed militant U.S. posture. But no: the general conservative take is that George W. Bush needs praise as the man who made it possible to withdraw more combat troops to Iraq by sending more of them in the first place. We'll soon see whether this bizarre the-more-troops-we-send-the-more-we-can-withdraw narrative works.