The biggest threat to this mission, and by extension to the future stability of this region and the long term security of the United States and our allies, is and always has been the inability to see, hear and communicate the truth to the American people and our allies. In the final analysis, it is not going to matter if the French support our mission in Iraq, but once Americans turn away from their soldiers in the field, we’ve lost.

We have gotten our troops into combat and now we are ignoring them. It’s little wonder that Americans would be angry at me for calling a civil war a civil war. Most of them have no idea what is going on! But this is not the sole fault of the media: if there were great demand for information from the wars, they would dispatch legions of journalists. It is the people at home who are ignoring our people at war.

. . . in the absence of better reporting of the complex situation on the ground, good and bad, Americans are increasingly turning against this mission. They are not ignoring poor media but are rewarding it by paying attention to it. The people are not ignoring the poor media, but they are doing something far worse: they are ignoring our troops!

The truth is often painful.  This is a long read, much of which I am relunctant to accept.  But I’ve never been to Iraq and he has.  The will of the American people is cracking.  Who can shore it up, and how?

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