The Disconnect

Max Boot writes about how the soldiers fighting in Iraq see a far different picture of how the war is going than the politicians and media types do back in the US.

How come that is the case? Why do most Americans seem down on the war in Iraq while the soldiers who are fighting on the front lines are reenlisting at rates higher than at any time in recent history? Sure, opponents may claim that new recruiting is down, but if the media does nothing but harp on how badly the war is going, what do you think that does for recruiters? It makes their job exponentially more difficult to overcome the inaccuracies and exaggerations of the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Yet in 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.

American soldiers are also much more optimistic than American civilians. 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.

Now, it could be that the Iraqi public and the U.S. armed forces are delusional. Maybe things really are on an irreversible downward slope. But before reaching such an apocalyptic conclusion, stop to consider why so many with firsthand experience have more hope than those without any.

It's simple - when you see that the Iraqis are conducting open and free elections, that more and more decisions are made through a political process rather than through bloodletting, and that Iraqis are continuing to step up to defend their country by signing up for security, police, and military jobs despite the bombing of those intake centers by al Qaeda and the various terrorists operating in Iraq, soldiers on the ground know that the country is heading in the right direction. And that doesn't take into account the rebuilding of infrastructure, which in many instances is really building it from scratch.

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.

How true. The Democrats have offered no practical alternative to the current course of action other than cutting and running, and even that alternative was shot down by Congress last Friday by a 403-3 vote. Democrats who are now talking about a timeline for withdrawal also know that the military was already considering troop drawdowns in Iraq as part of the next troop rotation due to improvements in the security situation. They're going to try and make it seem that the troops coming home were their idea, when it was always part of the plan.

UPDATE:
Stephen Green of Vodkapundit notes that al Qaeda is trying to transfer resources back to Afghanistan after trying to expand its operations in Iraq for the past two years. It's running into trouble in both places. What does this say about al Qaeda's ability to operate in Iraq or Afghanistan? It's got trouble. Which means that the US must be doing something right in both places.

And that the US needs to watch out for a new front. I see Sudan, Syria, and the Caucasus region. al Qaeda will try to exploit the failed states and lawless regions to set up new and additional camps. Since they've lost their sanctuaries in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're going to try to set up new camps.