Choose Your Preferred Narrative, but Quit Attacking the Troops

Confederate Yankee provides another typically keen commentary on the debate over Operation Iraqi Freedom, and takes the left to task for their incessant assault on the character and integrity of our Armed Forces.

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In addition to this public meeting of leaders in an area once deemed lost just a short time ago, U.S. casualties in Iraq have dropped in half at a time they were expected to actually rise, al Qaeda-aligned terrorists and insurgent groups have either turned, or become hounded and hunted in al Anbar, Diyala, and elsewhere. Some supporters are suggesting that what future history may regard as the turning point towards victory is either occurring, or may have already occurred.

For war detractors in our political classes, in the media and on the activist left, the war was lost long ago, and every day merely means another American mother will lose her soldier-child in a lost cause. To them, the war possibility of a turn-around in Iraq is unthinkable, any apparent progress is an illusion, or merely a matter of temporary gains before an inevitable fall.

Both sides are looking to make what they can of the much-anticipated "Petraeus Report" (which, as Matthew Sheppard points out, is actually something of a myth).

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I will go the next step--the constant attacks on members of the military (including today's shameless Associated Press story on war crimes accusations) are deliberate and calculated.  The goal is to demoralize the troops, undermine their will to fight, and turn them against the President's policy.  This would presumably lead to more troops speaking out in opposition.

They are waging a deliberate psychological warfare campaign against the men and women of the Armed Forces, an institution which study after demographic study shows is no Democrat constituency.  The military is too white, too conservative, too Christian, too "red state," and too well educated to heed their polluted ideology.  

The left views the military as a political adversary, despite the fact that most of the men and women of the Armed Forces view themselves as apolitical and view most politicians with the healthiest doses of suspicion.  Nevertheless, the left believes that the military is aligned with the right because as I write this, the military is fighting in a conflict that the left disagrees with.

It is a twisted world view, and their desire to see the troops come home humbled and defeated is unadulterated treachery.