It had to happen at some point. There’s clearly a need for a New Message from the Bush administration, or at least a fine-tuning of an old one - the war isn’t playing well across the country, so why not use the cover of a gigantic and destrcutive hurricane to try out a new approach? And why not leverage all that anxiety over gas prices? Our president is doing just that:

If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit more terrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States and our coalition.

That’s the future, kids, if we don’t straighten up and support the war. The incredibly popular Iraqi politician/warriors Zarqawi and bin Laden will inevitably gain control of the entire country, take over the oilfields, and become an economic superpower terrorist-training death machine. And you think gas prices are high now! Just you wait until you have to fill up at a BinLadenCo station! And you won’t find any beer or the latest Maxim at his minimart, oh no, just Korans and pita crisps. Is that what you want? IS IT!?

For you Doubting Thomases who wonder how al Qaeda is going to take over, reorganize, and govern a multiethnic, undefendable and monstrously large and factionalized country, rebuild the infrastructure, and start selling their oil to buyers worldwide, who wonder how they’re going to manage this when we can’t, youre clearly out of the loop. Those al Qaeda thugs are masters of terrorist bureaucracy, terrorist business administration, and terrorist commercial development.

Just look at the well-governed economic and military juggernaiut that was Afghanistan.

I’m not sure if this new “Why We’re Fighting” approach is going to fly any better than the last few (which flew pretty much like bricks with wings, it seems). But you have to applaud the effort.