Dubya Gets a Feaver; Or, Blame Dook

The NYTimes reports this a.m. that the purported "strategy" for purported "victory in Iraq," delivered by El Presidente last Wednesday at the Naval Academy, was actually written by a couple of Duke professors of political science, principally Peter D. Feaver.

Feaver is all over the Duke University web site, most significantly as director of something called the Triangle Institute of Security Studies (TISS). TISS, a consortium of academics from Duke, UNCC, and NCState, was started in 1958 at the height of the Cold War. Among its important research initiatives currently ... "the relationship between the military and society in the post-Cold War era," especially this question: "whether or not a gap exists between civilian and military society and whether this gap harmed military effectiveness."

In other words, folks, El Presidente and his handlers have decided that the only thing wrong with the Iraq War is a public relations problem, so Dr. Peter D. Feaver of Dook was hired away from the university for a season to go work on the National Security Council and to incidentally write "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," so that El Presidente could trot it out in Annapolis last Wednesday as though he actually HAD a strategy for winning and then getting the hell out. What he's got, rather, is an academic's research in the "gap" between the general public's perception and the reality of military operations, which fits in very well with the world view of an administration that considers every problem a PR problem which can be overcome by superior propaganda, which, incidentally, they're fully willing and capable of BUYING with taxpayer's money in the form of bogus "journalism."

Feaver's big insight: the American people will accept high levels of casualties in a war so long as they believe they'll ultimately win.

Which is apparently why El Presidente needed to say the word "victory" six times in his speech last Wednesday and why Dr. Feaver's document uses the word over and over. Say it enough times and it becomes true. They teach that at Duke.