TheBigOldDog on August 15, 2007 at 12:17 PM

I get that completely, TBOG. I know that is the problem we are facing right now. My issue is that we are allowing the naysayers to speak for us. And, on top of that, some people, including many here at HotAir, are starting to throw up their hands and just give in to the naysayers. I just don’t get that. This is war. And we cannot just throw up our hands and give up.

I don’t believe that enough people here understand how much WE, American civilians, are a KEY part of this war effort. And that WE, American civilians, have a KEY effect on the political solution and military solution in Iraq. So goes the support and the attitude of the American people, so goes the war effort. The Iraqis are doing their jobs, the Coalition military is doing their jobs. But, WE, the American people are failing.

I go back again to the grassroots efforts of this blog and Michelle Malkin to inspire and put a boot in the @sses of the American people to stop Amnesty. Where is that with regards to the war effort? All I see here lately is people giving up and focusing on the negative and people losing hope and losing will to bother to affect this war effort.

That needs to end.

People need to start reading the Military Blogs and get their heads out of the politics and the media reports and start listening and reading to what the embeds and the soldiers are saying. For every 1 negative thing happening in Iraq, there are tens, maybe hundreds, of positive things happening all over the country.

And I go back to my analogy of helping children learn. You don’t encourage a child to learn by doing nothing but focusing on the negative or just throwing up your hands and saying, forget it, my child, you are hopeless, it’s too hard, I give up. No, you understand the goal is to help this child learn. Period. There is no giving up. There is no just throwing up your hands and saying it’s hopeless. You continue on and try different ways of helping the child learn. You point out the negatives ONLY so as to make sure they understand their weaknesses and can work to improve themselves in those areas. And then you focus on their many, many successes and progresses to encourage them to keep learning and keep trying and keep pushing on.

And then you tell everyone you know, family and friends, about all the progress and success that your child is making in school to help them develop pride in themselves and then have an even bigger support group from their family and friends to help them continue learning.

We American civilians don’t need Boot Camp or a COIN manual to understand what our role is in supporting this war effort. It is as basic as helping our children to learn and succeed. If we all treated our military men and women and their efforts in the same caring and encouraging way we would help our children to succeed, we would succeed in this war effort.

WE, American civilians, are the key to success in this war. The enemy feeds off our lack of will and our lack of support for the war effort. And the Iraqi people are encouraged or discouraged by the same from us. As Michael Yon noted in his last dispatch, the Iraqi people have full faith in the American military, but have no faith in the American government. Well, guess what? The American government responds to the American people. The American people rose up to tell the government to stop Amnesty. Are WE, the American people, going to again rise up to tell the American government to continue supporting this war effort?

Those people who did their all to stop Amnesty, but are not doing the same to support this war effort, I’d like to know why.

Michael in MI on August 15, 2007 at 12:34 PM