War & Peace Quote by Rahm Emanuel

Failure is doing double duty here: it brands the Iraq War as strategically broken and politically toxic, and it does so with the kind of blunt repetition designed for cable news replay. Emanuel’s “It’s failed!” isn’t a careful audit; it’s a verdict. The point is to foreclose the administration’s preferred framing (progress, resolve, stay-the-course) and replace it with a single word that sticks.

The real craftsmanship is in the pivot: “Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?” That’s not a request for expertise so much as an attempt to borrow credibility across enemy lines. Murtha, a decorated Marine veteran and longtime defense hawk, functioned in 2005 as the Democratic Party’s unlikely messenger for withdrawal talk. Emanuel is telling skeptics: you don’t have to trust antiwar activists or liberal columnists; trust the guy with the ribbons and the committee seniority. It’s triangulation as moral judo, using the GOP’s own reverence for the military to legitimize dissent.

Context matters: this came as public patience with Iraq was cracking and Democrats were searching for a critique that wouldn’t be caricatured as weakness. Emanuel’s subtext is ruthless: if even Murtha is calling it, Bush has lost the “serious people” lane. It’s also internal party messaging, encouraging Democrats to rally behind a protective shield - criticize the war through a figure the right will have a harder time smearing. The line sells permission as much as it sells opposition.