The painfully obvious problem at the core of the "surge" strategy

I don't know why the Democrats have not made the following a central part of their criticism of the "New Way Forward" in Iraq:

On the one hand, President Bush says that the stakes are too high even to consider the possibility of "failure" in Iraq. From his speech last week:

Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

But on the other hand, it turns there are, in fact, circumstances in which the United States can accept the failure of this effort.

That would be if Iraq's own government fails to meet the new set of standards we have now laid down for it. Thus we had the long list of (virtually impossible to achieve) objectives for the Iraqi government -- fair sharing of oil revenues, control of sectarian militias, etc -- backed up with these warnings:

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended.... So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

Politically, you can understand the reason for each half of the President's schizophrenic message. He has to say that the struggle in Iraq is of world-historic proportions, to justify sustaining an unpopular effort. And he has to say that the United States will hold the Maliki government to some standard, so America does not just appear to be the paymaster for whatever the regime of the moment decides to do --including, most recently, more revenge-style "executions."

But logically and strategically, these statements simply cannot both be true. If failure in Iraq truly would be a disaster for America, then we don't care how bad the local government is --however bad it gets, it's still better than the alternative. And if, on the other hand, we're actively testing Maliki et al to see whether they deserve our support, then larger struggle cannot be the existential one Bush spent the first half of the speech (and the last four years) explaining. The struggle in Iraq cannot be both all-important and conditional.

The President's advisors clearly feel that they have found a powerful rhetorical weapon, in asking critics of their policy: Ok, what's your plan? (Rhetorically the easiest answer would be: the Iraq Study Group's report. It has its limitations, but it's divinely inspired compared with the "New Way Forward.") But there is also a rhetorical weapon for those same critics. They should ask the President: OK, what's your plan? Is it victory in Iraq, no matter what? Or it a tough-love approach to the Iraqi government to see if it really deserves support. It can't be both.