Backup, climb down

Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post:

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn’t work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. …
No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the “good” news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?

I wonder if it will make any difference. The only way it could is if the White House or the GOP were up to pushing the positive story. Evidently they aren’t, and never have been, which is an utter mystery to me. And we might well say that if you don’t have the ability not only to sell a war before it begins, but also during its course — you are not prepared to wage it, or to win it. Hat tip to Bizzy Blog.