...But the attention deficit is the real source of American weakness. For the creation of stable economic, legal and political institutions in a country like Iraq simply cannot be achieved in a 12-month time frame. The shorter the life of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the more difficult it will be to elicit the collaboration of local elites on which all imperial power must ultimately rely. Why would anyone want to collaborate with foreign occupiers who will soon, by their own admission, be gone?

Our enemies know their only chance of victory is to convince us to quit.

And we are getting a constant drumbeat from our media, politicians, and others that we are failing in Iraq, that we cannot succeed, and most of all, that every American casualty is a sign that our enemies are winning.

The issue the Left refuses to face is that this drumbeat aids our enemies. Does this mean we need to suppress free speech? No. Does this make dissenters traitors? No.

But the hard fact remains that when the New York Times prints up a big story, or a politician makes a speech, in which the premise is set forth that we cannot win, that we are losing, that we are in a "quagmire"--less than nine months after the beginning of hostilities--they play directly into the hands of the Baathists and others using our lack of will as their only workable strategy.

You can argue, you can call me names, you can puff up like a blowfish. That last fact is irrefutable, unless you harbor the fantasy that none of the public discourse in major U.S. media is ever heard by our enemies.

It took seven years for the U.S. military to create a free Japan.

What needs to happen is for the American Left to try and pull its monomaniacal focus off of the destruction of Bush, and try to come up with ways to actually wind up with a free and independent Iraq. And please, try to avoid the reflex regurgitation of "United Nations." Think, for a change.