Controlling the Center of Gravity

Make no mistake, the National Will to fight is our most critical Center of Gravity. Our enemy knows it, and they know their best allies are in the Western Left. Max Boot (is that a cool name or what) hits back, hard at those who want nothing else, will accept nothing else, than defeat and demoralization.

WHEN IT COMES to the future of Iraq, there is a deep disconnect between those who have firsthand knowledge of the situation — Iraqis and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq — and those whose impressions are shaped by doomsday press coverage and the imperatives of domestic politics. ...a survey last month from the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, 47% of Iraqis polled said their country was headed in the right direction, as opposed to 37% who said they thought that it was going in the wrong direction. And 56% thought things would be better in six months. Only 16% thought they would be worse.
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The Pew Research Center and the Council on Foreign Relations just released a survey of American elites that found that 64% of military officers are confident that we will succeed in establishing a stable democracy in Iraq. The comparable figures for journalists and academics are 33% and 27%, respectively. Even more impressive than the Pew poll is the evidence of how our service members are voting with their feet. Although both the Army and the Marine Corps are having trouble attracting fresh recruits — no surprise, given the state of public opinion regarding Iraq — reenlistment rates continue to exceed expectations. Veterans are expressing their confidence in the war effort by signing up to continue fighting.
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Thanks primarily to the increase in oil prices, the Iraqi economy is projected to grow at a whopping 16.8% next year. According to Brookings' Iraq index, there are five times more cars on the streets than in Saddam Hussein's day, five times more telephone subscribers and 32 times more Internet users.

The growth of the independent media — a prerequisite of liberal democracy — is even more inspiring. Before 2003 there was not a single independent media outlet in Iraq. Today, Brookings reports, there are 44 commercial TV stations, 72 radio stations and more than 100 newspapers.
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This is not meant to suggest that everything is wonderful in Iraq. The situation remains grim in many respects. But the most disheartening indicator of all is simply the American public's loss of confidence in the war effort. Abu Musab Zarqawi may be losing on the Arab street (his own family has disowned him), but he's winning on Main Street. And, as the Vietnam War showed, defeatism on the home front can become self-fulfilling.

And who is he talking to? Unreconstructed deadwood from the Cold War Left like HDS Greenway from The Boston Globe.

...American troops have become ''a catalyst for violence," and therefore more part of the problem than the solution. ... Victory on the battlefield, of the type President Bush keeps insisting upon, is beyond our grasp. Military commanders on the ground know that they are not defeating the insurgency and that they can only keep it disrupted until, hopefully, Iraqis can manage their own defense. ... Iraq today is ''a black hole," as France's antiterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Brugiere, said, sucking in impressionable youths from all over the Muslim world and radicalizing them. ... But the war in Iraq is not sustainable in this country, any more than the Vietnam War was in Laird's time. The longer we wait the harder the eventual pullout will be and the greater the betrayal of those who grew to depend on us. That's what we learned in Vietnam.

If you have the stomach and head-ache medicine, look over HDS Greenways work over the last 4 years. He has never been provictory. He has just been a vulture, watching and seeing a potential meal at every trip and mistake. He claims to have "recently come from Iraq." I will bet he never ventured beyond 5km from his hotel. Never spent significant time with Soldiers or Marines in the field. If he did, either he lives in a parallel universe, or he is selectively editing.