James offers an important commentary that reminds us that:

al Qaeda doesn't have to defeat the American military--or even the Iraqi military and security forces--on the battlefield. Terrorists, insurgents, and guerillas win by breaking their opponent's hostile will, not their physical capacity to carry on the fight.

There's not much chance of breaking our soldiers' will anytime soon but public opinion has turned against the war. In Vietnam, the American military never lost a major battle. Even the infamous Tet Offensive was ultimately a rout of the enemy. In the end, that didn't matter. Perception often trumps reality. The perception is that we are losing.

As Victor Davis Hanson writes in his piece in the April 2005 issue of National Review Online: "One of the most disheartening things about this war is the realization that on any given day, a number of once-stalwart supporters will suddenly hedge, demand someone's resignation, or bail, citing all sorts of legitimate grievances without explaining that none of their complaints compares to past disappointments in prior successful wars -- and without worry that the only war in which America was defeated was lost more at home than abroad."

Perhaps our friends to the left of center ought to ruminate on that, and as for the rest of us, we need to work toward helping them do just that! After all, "the terrorists in Iraq are hopelessly overmatched on the field of battle, so their whole strategy depends on Western advocates of defeatism and appeasement--and on the cooperation of the American press in making our battlefield victories look like defeats."