Bush, it has been reported, closed a 2007 planning session with the question “If we’re not there to win, why are we there?” The remark embodied the resoluteness of the President’s character as well as the tragedy of a country whose people have been prepared for more than half a century to send its sons and daughters to remote corners of the world in defense of freedom but whose political system has not been able to muster the same unified and persistent purpose.
