The discussion on strategic communications here has shifted between discussing two target audiences, one internal and the other external. In following it, a few thoughts have percolated to the top of my mind (when its not otherwise drowning in reference-writing for graduate and law school applicants).

First, with regard to internal audiences. While I can see the political advantage of framing it in these terms to those who favour current policies, I'm not sure I would portray this issue as one of bolstering or undermining the national will. The more thoughtful of critics of current US policy in Iraq argue that it is counterproductive, undermining the GWoT and damaging US prestige and influence in the region. That doesn't make them surrender monkeys.

What we are really talking about, therefore, is influencing a political and policy debate. This is, as others have suggested, a task for politicians and politically-appointed spokespersons. Public servants (uniformed or otherwise), in my view, should largely be confined to trying to provide the most honest account--recognizing that this process can never really be a fully apolitical one.

Second, with regard to external audiences, I think it is important to recognize that US policies have profound effects on the way the US is viewed in the Muslim world, and that "strategic communications" can never more than slightly offset that. In many ways, the US is viewed in the Middle East much as the Soviet Union was viewed in Eastern Europe during the Cold War: as a supporter of authoritarian repression and occupation (via Israel in the WBG, Syria, and Lebanon, and now the US directly in Iraq). Discussing how to best spin policies that are profoundly disliked by the locals is, at a certain point, rather like convincing Estonians in the 1970s that Moscow had been misunderstood. I doubt even a Soviet MTV could have done that.

It may well be that buttressing Middle Eastern repressive dictatorships, for example, serves US security interests (although, for a fleeting post 9/11 moment, Washington appeared to vacillate on this). However when these particular chickens (among others) come home to roost it shouldn't just be treated as a failure of "strategic communications."

(I will add, as an aside, that the US has not received, nor adequately marketed, those cases where it has acted to uphold the interests of Muslim communities, whether in humanitarian intervention in Somalia, its role in ending the war in Bosnia, or reversing Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. That is much more a failure of strategic communications--although it also highlights the extent to which suspicion of Washington is so deep that even "good deeds" are perceived through dark, conspiratorial lenses.)