Some friends and I shared a few beers on Friday night and reflected on the end of the Iraq war. One pointed to this portion of Obama’s speech as perhaps the most important:

There are many lessons to be learned from what we’ve experienced. We have learned that America must go to war with clearly defined goals, which is why I’ve ordered a review of our policy in Afghanistan. We have learned that we must always weigh the costs of action, and communicate those costs candidly to the American people, which is why I’ve put Iraq and Afghanistan into my budget. We have learned that in the 21st century, we must use all elements of American power to achieve our objectives, which is why I am committed to building our civilian national security capacity so that the burden is not continually pushed on to our military. We have learned that our political leaders must pursue the broad and bipartisan support that our national security policies depend upon, which is why I will consult with Congress and in carrying out my plans. And we have learned the importance of working closely with friends and allies, which is why we are launching a new era of engagement in the world.

Something I’ve feared in my idle moments is that American politics will suffer from an Iraq Syndrome — one side claiming Iraq demonstrates the futility of military force, another saying that ultimately the Iraq war was redeemed in 2007 and so all its basic premises apply. Another cycle of pinballing between overlearning and underlearning the lessons of Iraq, in other words, without due rigor as to what those lessons in fact are, and what painful-but-helpful guidance they offer. Future debates would hinge on which faction can bait the other into mouthing the reductive shibboleths of Iraq, resolving nothing and convincing no one.

Obama is offering a mature way out of that toxic trap. His lessons are sensible. They reflect what the war was and why it was a folly. They’re neither truisms nor evasions. They blend well with progressive critiques of the war but they won’t grate in conservative ears. Call it truth and reconciliation, a face-saving way out of the mire of not just Iraq, but the discourse of Iraq. "I don’t just want to end the war," Obama said on Jan. 31, 2008, "but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." I’ve always considered that to be the most important thing he’s ever said about the war. This paragraph of the speech goes a long way toward fulfiling its promise.

Conservatives appear, at the moment, unwilling to push back on this front. John McCain endorsed Obama’s strategy. No one, as far as I’m aware, emerged from CPAC or anywhere else yelling about a dolchstoss. That’s good, and I hope it holds. Obama’s speech is most certainly a face-saving way for the right to emerge from Iraq.

Update: For more on that final point, go to today’s Topic A at the Washington Post. Commenting on the Obama speech are the McCain’s chief national-security aide, Randy Scheunemann; Doug Feith; AEI’s Dani Pletka; and Meghan O’Sullivan, one of the few reality-based Iraq staffers at the Bush White House. None of them attack Obama’s Iraq plan. Instead, they prefer to invent some divide between Obama and the left, or portray Obama as consistent with the Bush administration. (Laugh while Scheunemann continues to attack a 16-month timetable and praises a 19-month timetable.) Such immaturity — I exempt O’Sullivan here — is the tribute vice pays to virtue, I suppose. Obnoxiousness is better than opposition.