The commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq has a theory as to why the mission is so badly floundering. Major General Rick Lynch believes that if the media were more upbeat, that would somehow improve the fortunes of the troops in their battle against the Iraqi insurgents. Perhaps if there were more stories of painted schoolhouses there would be fewer IEDs buried on the roadside.

To be fair, Lynch isn’t really addressing the battlefield in Iraq. His focus is on the perceptions of Americans at home and how to persuade them to gird for our extended participation in this quagmire:

“If the American people are informed properly, I believe they will be supportive of the mission. But they’re not getting the right story. As a result, they’re anti the war.”

First of all, they are getting the right story – the right-wing story, that is. They get it every day from an incurious press corps that functions by Xeroxing presidential PR for publication. They get it from the White House and its delegates (including generals like Petraeus and Lynch) who carry the administration’s water. They get it from the Congress who is too weak to stand up for the citizens begging for leadership out of this war.

At the risk of drawing the ire of those who think it’s improper to ever question a military leader, I have to disagree with Lynch’s contention that Americans are against the war because they are uninformed. Somehow, despite the best efforts of chickenhawks in the media, the people have arrived at the conclusion that they were duped and they don’t want to take it anymore.

Lynch claims that the media is ignoring successes in Iraq like declining casualties. Even if we accept this contention, which many experts dispute, then how does he explain this:

“The enemy now is more lethal and more aggressive than I’ve ever seen him be because he knows he’s on the run.”

It is blatantly contradictory to suggest that the enemy can be both more lethal and yet cause fewer casualties simultaneously. And it is absurd to surmise that because the enemy is more aggressive they are on the verge of defeat. The converse of that would mean that the declining casualties of a less aggressive foe is evidence that the enemy is growing stronger.

Lynch goes on to astutely observe that political and economic progress in Iraq is slow; that the police are often “nonexistent, incapable or corrupt”; that Iraqis want us to leave; and that they are untrustworthy allies that are likely to turn on us. Yet none of this staunches his optimism for a mission that he say is must proceed for at least another five years.

Therein lies the reason for his concentration on the media. The American people are already fed up with having our troops embedded in a civil war that has been raging for hundreds of years. They are tired of diverting scarce resources from domestic priorities like health care, national security, natural disasters, etc. And they fear that our misguided foreign policy has made us an international pariah and is exacerbating the threat of terrorism.

So Lynch needs to recruit the media to convert the population into believers in the mission if he is to sustain this war for another half decade. I hope that is a mission in which he fails. I hope the media can manage to find a voice that reflects reality, honesty, and a sense of duty to their journalistic purpose of responsibly informing citizens.