The anti-war crowd engages in constant orgies of breast beating so it is only natural that they question it when others do not, as with the rather plaintive question above. Furthermore, I suspect a simple acknowledgement of mistakes would never be enough for the anti-war crowd. What they really desire is a wallowing in manufactured guilt.

But the simple answer is that while ALL wars involve mistakes it is not very leader-like to dwell on them. Did Roosevelt acknowledge his mistakes? Did Truman? Lincoln? Perhaps later, in memoirs for some, but a true leader rarely beats his breast in public.
 

Underlying assumption: That the US must “improve” things in Iraq.

So far the US has toppled a despot, killed a bunch of terrorists and has suffered low casualties while doing so. I find it difficult to improve on such a positive scenario – kill even more terrorists while suffering NO casualties, perhaps?

Are you admitting or perhaps finally entertaining the possiblity that as the chief executive and commander-in-chief, he has failed to provide the leadership to win the war? He likes to make historical allusions to President Harry Truman, who also prosecuted an unpopular war and had low approval ratings at the end of his term, as comparable to his current predicament.
But as I remember, President Truman also had a plaque on his desk in the oval office that stated: “The buck stops here.”
How can the average American voter be expected to accept the responsibility of our role in the world and the long, harg slog in Iraq, if Bush refuses to acknowledge his mistakes as a war-time leader to the American people?

Also, we are losing the war in Afghanistan due to the appeasement of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Last September the Pakistan government officals signed a peace treaty with the Taliban insurgents in North Waziristan in which the Taliban agreed to stop cross-border incursions into Afghanistan to aid Taliban fighting against American and NATO forces. Despite the peace treaty, Taliban insurgents in North Waziristan continue to cross the border, sending over suicide bombers trained by former Pakistani generals, into Afghanistan. President Musharraf now terms the dire situation in North Waziristan as a creeping Talbanization in his country.
Why hasn’t President Bush addressed this problem in the war on terror? After all, he continues to call Musharraf a great ally in the war on terror. But Musharraf seems to be the Pakistani version of Neville Chamberlain.

The commentor here blames Bush. I see this all the time and I wonder: Do these folks who keep wanting Bush to “explain” ever watch television? The President has been ‘explaining’ for years and years at the top of his voice. He has explained his strategy, his hopes, his tactics and exactly what is at stake ad infinitum but I guess there will always be those who don’t listen, or perhaps hears instead the MSM’s “spin” on Bush’s many, many public pronouncements.
 

Cohen also wrote a prominent essay in the Washington Post which described the Walt and Mearsheimer paper on the Israel Lobby as bearing “all the traditional hallmarks of anti-Semitism: “obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews”, accusations toward Jews of “disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments”, as well as selection of “everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group” and equally systematical suppression of “any exculpatory information”.(Wiki).

Hardly the non partisan views that are likely to change too many American minds…

Assuming that the U.S. had an “empire,” how should the U.S. have kept it? Please advise.