The source of the problem in the US

The Strata-Sphere:

... With the exception of George Bush, who has been an amazingly successful and good President (look at his list of accomplishments and compare it to any other modern President) Congress and the media has to be the worst group of people to be in those positions in our entire history. This is no Continental Congress braving all sorts of political and deadly consequences to create a brave new world. No, this is a bunch of egotistical, waffling, finger pointers who voted support for Iraq and have had no staying power to see it through.

And the media is much, much worse than that. They don’t report, they echo. They are amazingly arrogant about things they could not do themselves. And they are obsessed with image, not essence.

These two nadir’s of American culture have combined to create a deadly feedback loop with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda kills because every massacre makes the Congress and Media quake and piss their pants. Al-Qaeda has been taught, like Pavlov’s dog, that violence does not bring retribution and destruction upon those inflicting the violence - it gains them political and media capitol....

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There is more. Al Qaeda's media strategy has been successful because of a compliant media that has chosen an invalid metric for measuring progress in the war and a Congress that has accepted that invalid metric. The suggestion that violence against non combatants should be a determining factor in a war rather than the battle between opposing forces certainly makes the enemies job easier. they avoid contact with our forces and kill civilians and the media never reports the event as a war crime but a failure on our part to stop the "violence."