All three of these blog posts hit upon the fact that the burgeoning economic successes felt by Iraqis will push them to desire more stability. Is this a logical thought process?

I'd argue that these theories make sense in a westernized mind. If I have little or nothing, I'll be willing to fight to get something, if just to provide the basics for my family. If I'm doing well, however, and see the potential of doing even better (Iraq has the fastest growing economy in the Middle East), then I'm going to want to be able to enjoy that prosperity. That thought process works for me, but what we don't yet know is if that thought process applies to Iraqis, probably because we simply don't understand the Iraqis more than we understand any other Middle Eastern culture.

Hopefully, that gap in cultural understanding will eventually begin to close and the War on Terror will transition away from physical to information battlefields if our leaders are smart enough to follow the advice in this lengthy but informative George Packer article. Eric Martin builds on the Packer article with points certainly worth considering, though I'm not certain if either man is 100% correct.

Taken all together, and combined with reading the extended works of embedded journalists Yon, Fumento, Totten, Roggio, and others, and we're forced towards a disturbing series of conclusions.

First, the Iraq War was a decisive military victory in 2003, but since that time, American civilian and military leadership has utterly failed to understand the nature of the insurgent and terrorist conflicts, or how to address it on a strategic level.

The Iraq War and larger War on Terror are information wars that our leaders have expressed little interest in, or aptitude for. We (and I include myself here) have for far too long fundamentally considered the War on Terror to be a military endeavor, and certainly there is an important military role to be played in defeating Islamic extremists. The truism remains that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

The problem remains, that for far too long we've simply relied upon killing people once they've metastasized into terrorists; if we follow the advice of those mentioned in Packer's article and others to learn the culture and social networks of the societies that generate our enemies, we can possibly take steps to prevent them from becoming militants by defeating jihadist organizations ideologically. We don't necessarily have to make them like us as so many dhimmis in the United States and especially Europe seem inclined, we simply need to make the effort to understand what triggers those who dislike us to make the jump to acting against us, and eliminate that trigger mechanism.

Despite the lamentations of the defeat-minded media, Democratic politicians and a liberal pundit class under the delusion that a U.S. defeat in Iraq is (a.) inevitable, and (b.) something they can turn to their political advantage; we seem to have a very strong chance of winning in Iraq if we can change our perceptions of how best to fight both this war, and the larger War on Terror.

Despite the increasingly apparent strategic incompetence displayed thus far by our civilian and senior military leadership, our soldiers and marines in the field have performed brilliantly on the tactical level, enabling us to achieve unqualified tactical victories in any direct conflict with terrorist or insurgent forces in Iraq. As MTTs (Military Transition Teams) work with Iraqi Army units impart discipline, professionalism and tactics, the Iraqis are increasing responsible for finding, engaging and killing "Ali Babba"—their term for insurgents—on their own. As a result, we've been able to maintain a stalemate in Iraq, even as we've thus far refused to act against the Syrian and Iranian governments supplying the various insurgency, terrorist, criminal and sectarian forces focused on Balkanizing the country.

Without a doubt, we can win in Iraq. The problem is that we don't seem to be directing our military where they would be the most effective, nor are we doing the other necessary things discussed in Parker's article to personalize and localize success through non-military means.

There are still some major combat operations yet to be waged—al-Sadr's Madhi Army being an almost certain target, and belligerents Iran and Syria are on the horizon and angling towards a direct conflict —but as our MTTs become more skilled at imparting knowledge, the need for U.S. soldiers in direct combat roles should decline, even if the overall number of troops remains close to current levels.

We do do the right things in fits and starts. Today, we handed over Najaf to the Iraqis. In Ramadi, where despite the comparative absence of media attention when compared to Baghdad, the real war against the worst elements of the Sunni insurgency is being fought and won, block by block, over time.

Unfortunately, as time goes on, it seems that our leaders and institutions are unwilling to change, and our population too fickle, to commit to the adaptation of the kind of paradigm shift needed to fight an information-based war that as a media nation, we are quite well-suited to win. As we did in World War II, we seem committed to winning though our overwhelming industrial might and inertia. That is an important element of an eventual victuroy,but we are not in a shooting World War. We could potentially accomplish far more with subtle and not so subtle cultural methods than we could with riflemen and tanks.

Draft Hollywood. Have David Zucker and his equivalents releasing Arab-language satire mocking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muqtada al-Sadr, and Osama bin Laden. Have conspiracy theory-minded director Oliver Stone deliver a JFK focusing on the Machiavellian schemes of Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar Assad, release it in Lebanon, and see how popular Hezbollah remains.

Lend Hollywood behind-the-scenes talents to Middle Eastern casts in pro-Arab democracy, anti-insurgency, anti-terrorist, and anti-Sharia films and television shows. We are well equipped to succeed in a propaganda war in venues large and small, and yet we do not fight this battle, acting if propaganda is a dishonorable way to wage a conflict between cultures, even as the enemy uses those same methods to combat us through our own complacent and perhaps willing media.

At this point, if we win in Iraq, it will be despite our Administration, which does not seem to understand key elements of the non-military conflict. It will be despite a Democratic Party that still does not seem to be able to see beyond the short-term political scraps it can lap up placating a disgruntled populace. If we win, it will be despite a media that either does not know, or does not care, how they are being used to fight against the very democracies that allow them to thrive.

No, if we win in Iraq, the victory will go to the Iraqi people, and the ability of the American soldier, sailor, airman and marines to outlast the incompetence of old generals fighting past wars and politicians more concerned about fighting each other for fickle public opinion.

We can win in Iraq, and indeed we may yet, but it will come in spite of our leadership, not because of it.