The Cold Hard Truth

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

And Now a Word for President Bush

I'm glad it's over. I'm glad Bush won. I'm glad the republicans held a majority in the house and senate. Now I'm worried about Iraq. This administrations inability to prosecute the Iraq war successfully(not enough troops, Abu Graib, Fallujah, etc) has strained even this wars most ardent supporters. (like myself) This President got my vote, and now he has my criticism. The public relations effort to sell this war around the world was non existent. Maybe we felt we didn't need one; like the troops we didn't need to secure Iraqs borders. Al Qaeda has one: we don't. Every instance Al Jazeera broadcasts footage of carnage from Iraq-our soldiers become targets. The fact that we have no communication strategy for this war has enabled the terrorists to write the script which includes "Zionists, oil, BUSHDEVIL, crusaders, etc." They have been able to manipulate the perception of our war effort, put our soldiers in extreme danger and now have branded them "the jews" according to NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, and damage our credibility with the Arab public. We have the strongest military in the world but the jihadists are winning the war of propaganda and perception, invariably dooming our mission to democratize the Middle East to failure. Our military blunders are another matter, and probably not as fatal. In a world where perception is reality: the Iraqis are starting to think we're the devil, and we haven't convinced them otherwise and that is the big challenge. Now that the administration has rightly been allowed to finish what they started. It's time to wake up and smell the failures- and then do something about them.

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