Bush's trip to Anbar was not just a photo-op start to the September PR blitz in support of the surge. According to Fred Kagan, proud author of the surge, it was somehow akin to Lincoln at Gettysburg. Even if he has to say so himself.
The Gettysburg Of This War: The Bush Visit Could Well Mark A Key Turning Point In The War In Iraq And The War On Terror.
The wingnuts are loving it. So forget comparing this to Vietnam. It has nothing to do with a major power bogged down in the quagmire of an insurgency. It's like Normandy. No. It's like the Battle Of The Bulge. No. It's like fucking Gettysburg. And we can compare Bush's visit to the Sermon On The Mount. No. We can make it seem reminiscent of the Gettysburg Address. After 4 1/2 years of "Mission Accomplished" and "The Last Throes" there is little that can be done to resell this war to the vast majority. So they are going to go completely over the top in trying to sell it.
We only have reportsof the process involved in the delivery of Lincoln's Gettysburg address. We can only imagine that Lincoln delivered the speech he wrote himself, looking, like in this youtube video, like he had looked at the text for the first time.
Interesting to compare the rhetorical styles of Bush and Lincoln. From a speech later in the day, Bush used his favorite rhetorical ploy of summarizing what he previously said by using the phrase "in other words".
I'm keeping pretty good company, as you can see. I brought out the A Team so they could be with the folks who are making a significant difference in this war against these radicals and extremists. In Anbar you're seeing firsthand the dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure. In other words, you're seeing success.
Lincoln could have used this rhetorical device to maybe give his audience much more than the 272 words he gave them that day.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Maybe after "Four score and seven years ago" Lincoln could have said, "In other words, 87 years ago". Or maybe, "In other words, way back then".