Here.

America's enemies have learned that the giant will run when body bags start coming home or when things get messy. They learned that from Vietnam. They learned that from Iran. They learned that from Lebanon. They learned it from Somalia. It has become part of their battle plan.

The relationship between domestic politics and foreign wars has become a feedback mechanism. Neither is independent of the other. This is important to understand.

So, when our enemies attack in Iraq, they do not do so in a vacuum. Their primary goals are not to destroy a police station or to assassinate a political figure or even to cause chaos. They have one goal - to break the will of the democracy. The attacks are meant as "proof" of failure to the American audience. If the enemy believed that we would be discouraged by an epidemic of capitalism in Baghdad, then that is what we would see.

We contribute to the problem by treating the attacks as if the enemy has no knowledge of history or of our politics. We seem to believe that our enemies are not adults who are capable of picking up a newspaper, browsing the internet or learning. So, we fill reams of newsprint about how if Event A were to happen it would show that we were losing and then are shocked to see that Event A occurs. Indeed, we act like Pavlovian dogs –salivating on cue when the right stimulant is presented.

To win in Iraq, we must take advantage of this feedback mechanism ourselves. We must convince our enemies that we will never be discouraged and their fight is futile. The security situation in Iraq will improve when the enemy will cease to believe that the gains in the American politics outweigh the losses to them.