Though it's not perfect (emphasis mine:) The United States, at this writing, has been in Iraq fifteen months. At the same point in the Civil War, Lincoln faced, well, a disaster unmitigated and unprecedented. He was losing . He didn't lose, at least in part because he was able to both inspire and draw on the kind of moral absolutism necessary to win wars. Bush has been unable to do the same, at least in part because he is undercut by evidence of his own dishonesty, but also because moral absolutism is nearly impossible to sustain in the glare of a twenty-four-hour news cycle.
I would like him to better answer your challenges in light of this statement...
How unfortunate for the author. He appears to be trying to make the essential case that GWB is right about radical Islamist terrorist, yet the author can't get past the DISHONESTY OF THE LEFT of which he is a part. It undercuts his entire article.