The Will Problem

I've been nearly obsessed with it of late, but Wretchard absolutely nails it:

The near panic which gripped Teheran and Damascus in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom was not the result of the fear that America had found new weapons -- the lethality of those weapons were already known -- but that it had found unexpected the will to use them. Today even better weapons are there yet the American force in Iraq is regarded as having become totally impotent, not because it has become militarily weaker; through fixed airbases, experience, new weapons it has become immeasurably stronger than it was in 2003. But it's impotence is due entirely to the perception that it's will has drained away -- that it cannot use its power. That leaves American power weaker than had it never been used. As Tom Schelling taught commitments that are repudiated -- such as by those politicians who now say they were against OIF even before they voted for it -- destroy not only the current commitments but the possibility of future commitments. The cost of escaping one commitment “is the discrediting of other commitments that one would still like to be credited”.

There is very little evidence that we have the will to do what must be done in this war.

Our soldiers do not fear the enemy---they fear the fickleness of their countrymen.