Bloggings by boz

Stygius nails it:

Polling of American disenchantment with Iraq evoke the myth that the American attention span won't permit a long project that involves American casualties. Thus, some -- like the Out of Iraq Caucus -- feel increasingly emboldened to argue for either a drawdown or withdrawal of American forces, often dressing it up in calls for a specific timetable. This is not only strategic lunacy, it is politically short-sighted. Others rail against media manipulation as the source of this perception, urging complicity with administration rhetoric and occasionally outright delusion. Both of these approaches misdiagnose America's public perception, their respective diagnoses based on this same, condescending myth.

Ivo Daadler, on the other hand, gets it right while criticizing David Brooks' latest. It's not about defeatism. The anxiety is not about Iraq in and of itself, but rather the Bush Administration's eroding credibility and unwillingness to play it straight. In effect, it's about leadership.

As does former Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX):

The American public is perfectly capable of dealing with the truth. The Bush administration needs to level with the public about the difficulty of the job ahead in Iraq rather than making general statements indicating that all is well. We will stay the course in Iraq if the country is convinced that Bush has a realistic plan for the future. It's time for less myth and more reality.

And conservative blogger/journalist Austin Bay:

The Bush administration has yet to ask the American people -- correction, has yet to demand of the American people -- the sustained, shared sacrifice it takes to win this long, intricate war of bullets, ballots and bricks.

Bullets go bang, and even CBS understands bullets. Ballots make an impression -- in terms of this war's battlespace, the January Iraqi elections were World War II's D-Day and Battle of the Bulge combined. But the bricks -- the building of Iraq, Afghanistan and the other hard corners where this war is and will be fought -- that's a delicate and decades-long challenge.

Given the vicious enemy we face, five years, perhaps 15 years from now, occasional bullets and bombs will disrupt the political and economic building. This is the Bush administration's biggest strategic mistake: failure to tap the American willingness produced by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

More later...