Amir Taheri in the New York Post:
Most Americans are unfamiliar with Iraq's complex political, ethnic, religious and cultural realities. So, when television presents a charred vehicle left by a suicide bomber and experts pronouncing Iraq a failure, many decide that it is a lost cause - and the sooner the Americans extricate themselves, the better.
This is precisely why the Saddamite desperados and the jihadists keep fighting a war in Iraq that they cannot win.
Their strategy is based on a simple assumption: Americans will be so shocked and disheartened by the daily carnage that they'll force their government to "cut and run" - or, if it refuses, replace it with one that will.
In Jihadist circles, that strategy is known as "the Madrid Logic" (mantaq al-Madrid), after the deadly terrorist operation in the Spanish capital that succeeded in changing that country's government and its foreign policy.
Isn't it also the real lesson of Vietnam?
It is largely the hope of breaking the will of the American people that keeps the insurgency alive.
I marvel that the insurgency is able to find so much support in the U.S. mainstream press. But it would appear the Washington Post, at least, is paying a price for it.
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