Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
My issue is not so much that he does not understand what the strategy is but rather that he takes what little knowledge he has and makes the leap to "We're being lied to."

SFC W
Fair enough. We feel like we're being lied to. Like I said above, we feel how we feel. It's our right. Once people are wrong about, "WMDs," dead enders" and "mission accomplished," we're allowed to stop listening. We're allowed to feel like we're being lied to. We don't need to believe "we've finally figured out what we're doing."

For the record though, I know the difference between tactics and strategy. The strategy - last I heard - was to reduce violence, in order to create "breathing space" which would lead to reconciliation. I think most people admit the strategy isn't working.



I suspect that the new strategy is to try some different tactics and see if something salvageable emerges from the chaos, which makes some sense. Or it's to arm the Sunni in order to curb Iranian influence and no one has the courage to admit that our strategy is arming the ones who killed us and who used to work for Saddam. (Of course, my last suggestion may be caused by my incorrect belief that I've been lied to. I have biases just like everyone else.)

PS: When you're talking about hearts and minds, pictures are almost always more effective than words. I was thinking about how stupid the anti Paetreus moveon.org ad was and thinking that they should've run the above picture with the headline, "Do you want America's best and bravest to die in order to give Maliki more time?" But that was just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could come up with a pretty good pro war ad too. It wouldn't use any of the following terms: Bush, Maliki, surge or benchmarks. I'd probably go with some version of Petraeus knows what he's doing and he deserves our support. He seems to be the only one the public trusts, so it makes sense to reinforce those beliefs. Or maybe I'd let RTK talk directly to the camera about why he wants to go back to Iraq. It depends on whether or not RTK could talk calmly about Iraq for 30 seconds without raising his voice.