Washington, D.C. — As the world watched Gen. David Petraeus fumble with a broken microphone before speaking on progress in Iraq, Newt Gingrich was across town, wrapping up a long speech, whose ending surprised his audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Addressing a sizable crowd in a 12th-floor conference room, Gingrich asserted that the Iraq war may not have been necessary if Congress and the Bush administration had better handled matters after the September 11th attacks six years ago today.

Gingrich posed a hypothetical scenario beginning September 12, 2001, in which the U.S. immediately engaged in a broad diplomatic, military, and economic mobilization described over 11 single-spaced pages of his speech. “Some may read this speech and ask whether the United States would have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in this alternative history,” Gingrich said. “The answer is not immediately obvious but the principles are.” He noted that in the region including Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, “there might have been less violence as weak dictatorships realized they could not survive against the fury of an American people mobilized to action.”

It matters little whether Gingrich is right, or even whether such speculation based on hindsight is of any value. What is extremely significant is that he said it — that important Republicans who support the war effort in Iraq are dropping hints that maybe, in hindsight, the invasion wasn’t such a great idea. While Gingrich speaks freely, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R.) has been suggesting this for months by omission, in contrast to the other major Republican candidates.

Gingrich’s speech was no antiwar missive. The former House Speaker noted that the new tactics in Iraq have produced “impressive” results, “worthy of our continued support.” He stated that “it would be extraordinarily destructive for the American Congress to impose surrender and defeat on the United States by legislation which the enemy has been unable to impose by combat against our armed forces.”

But his lengthy discourse contained near its conclusion a quiet rejection of the Bush administration’s justification for going to war, which had been predicated on the idea that attempts to contain Saddam Hussein would be futile and dangerous. Bush argued that the Iraq war was unavoidable, not only from the contingency that the former Iraqi dictator could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, but also from Hussein’s flagrant pre-9/11 transgressions against United Nations resolutions that had made “regime change” the policy of President Bill Clinton. By calling the war avoidable, Gingrich was rejecting this thinking.

Even when he was in politics, Gingrich was always an idea man, unafraid to speak his mind regardless of the political consequences. The situation is trickier for a presidential candidate in a Republican primary, which is why Romney has been far more reserved.

Like Gingrich, Romney supports the Iraq-war effort today, says he is glad to see Saddam Hussein gone, and opposes a withdrawal timetable. He says he will not second-guess President Bush (or Sen. Hillary Clinton) for going to war based on the intelligence then available in the risky post-9/11 world. Yet he is unique among the serious Republican presidential contenders because he has never said he would do it all over again, and they all have. Asked in a June 7 debate whether it had been a mistake to invade Iraq “knowing everything you know right now,” he refused twice to answer. He called the question an “unreasonable hypothetical” and said that the issue was a “non-sequitur” and a “null set” (he meant to say “moot point”) because we’re already in Iraq.

In the most recent New Hampshire debate, Romney was markedly cautious on Iraq, drawing ire from some conservative commentators and Sen. John McCain. But more importantly, Romney spoke repeatedly of the Iraq surge (which he endorsed) as a tactical means of ending the war and bringing troops home as quickly as possible. This has been a staple of his recent war rhetoric, in contrast to his more hawkish rivals, who all say explicitly that they would do it all over again.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks of the Iraq invasion as part of “going on offense” against terrorists — a military venture of unquestionable value. For McCain, the war has been mismanaged and poorly planned, but the invasion was still “necessary and just.” Even former Sen. Fred Thompson (R.), the GOP newcomer (and the frontrunner in one national poll), said on Friday that if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq, “we would face a situation worse than what we face today.”

Romney’s spokesman, Kevin Madden, did not discourage the idea that Romney does not share their view or that of Bush. “Any candidate that can convince the American electorate that they represent a real change is, I think, always going to be at an advantage,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean criticism [of Bush]…What it does represent is a recognition that even in the last eight years, there have been some things that could have been done better.” Madden could point to no statement by Romney committing him to the idea of doing Iraq all over again.

Romney may be on to something. Despite recent improvements in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus has now urged Congress to wait six more months before making decisions about troop deployment. He has projected that a “drawdown” of troops even to pre-“surge” levels could not be realistically completed before the summer of 2008 without jeopardizing the security situation on the ground.

Putting aside the more important considerations of war strategy, this is the worst possible political result of Petraeus’s report for Republicans, who lost control of Congress after three years of the Iraq occupation. What will 2008 be like in the midst of a five-year occupation? Romney may be leaving a door open, in case he wins the nomination, to say that while America still cannot run from Iraq, he would probably not have become involved to begin with, knowing what he knows now. Such a position would be invaluable when debating Senator Clinton, who spoke out for and voted for a war that 57 percent of Americans now say was a mistake.

Future presidents, like the current one, will face agonizing choices over whether to become involved in foreign wars. For that reason, the eventual Republican nominee will be forced to answer the “hypothetical” question about this war. He may need to give an answer that many Republicans don’t want to hear.

— David Freddoso is a National Review Online staff reporter.