The Mattel Metric

I think one of the major stories of the Iraq War will be the role of the Internet in maintaining troop morale despite public opinion polls that went south on the war shortly after the statue of Saddam was pulled down.

Troop morale has also been maintained despite the "three-year rule" that holds that American patience dwindles after three years of war without victory.

Indeed, much is made of the anti-war side's use of the Internet to organize and lobby the government and legislators, and to promote anti-war candidates. Where is the equivalent pro-war effort?

That Internet effort exists. The pro-war side, however, is not focused on elections and legislators. The pro-war side is focused on the troops themselves. Organizations all over the country send the troops packages of goodies and needed supplies as well as messages of support. For the troops in the field, abstract opinion polls pale in the face of continued and large-scale direct support from ordinary Americans back home.

And our troops respond by fighting as hard now as they did in March 2003. They respond by reenlisting. And the civilian population from which the support for the war is strongest continues to supply new recruits.

It is easy to see the breadth of the support for our military in a difficult war by visiting toy stores. Oh, not the upper class boutique "toy" stores where you can get expensive items that enrich your only child--the real toy stores that real people visit to get toys for their children to play with. The shelves are stocked with "war toys." Tanks and armored vehicles, aircraft carriers, soldiers and Marines, and combat aircraft. There are even official United States Army action figures that honor individual medal holders from the Long War!

I contrast this Mattel Metric with my own childhood in the waning days of our Vietnam War loss. I had plenty of war toys. My GI Joes had many a war adventure. But then came our defeat in Vietnam. And the public reaction against anything and everything military became evident to me even as a child. All of a sudden, GI Joe quit the military. That's right. The company that made GI Joe stopped making military gear for their action figures.

Instead of weapons and uniforms, all of a sudden all you could get was "action" gear like firefighting equipment or deep see diving or other such crap. My Joes had to make do with aging World War II equipment. The tip of the carbine has broken off? Tough it out Joe. No resupply for you. Make do. And so my Joes made do with what they had from the pre-war days when it was ok to buy your children war toys.

But going by the toy stores I go to this Christmas season, the support for our troops is real based on how our people spend their money for presents for their children. Weapons, soldiers, and Marines that show our armed forces defending us--not little social worker dolls that you can buy for Joe to show how much you "support" the troops by assuming every Joe is a deranged war victim badly in need of compassionate repair.

Clausewitz wrote that war depends on the support of the people as one of the crucial legs of support. In this war, which our press always labels "increasingly unpopular" regardless of which direction the actual numbers are going, a lot of our people do indeed support the war.

And these supporters of victory or even of just the troops themselves, have organized to reach out directly to the troops rather than try to get our media and elites to demonstrate that support. Soccer balls, school supplies, and Beanie Babies to give to Iraqi children; batteries and baby wipes to keep them fighting; books, DVDs, and CDs; and even air conditioners early in the war, all are tangible indicators of support from back home.

Our troops have responded to this support by believing in the justness of the cause they are fighting for, by reenlisting, and by providing us with a growing victory in Iraq when the elites wrote off the whole enterprise and actively sought our nation's defeat in Iraq.

Our elites are puzzled by this support. To our elites, this support is invisible, in fact. Nobody they know supports the war or sends packages to the troops. Their friends saw Redacted and all the other crap anti-war films that hardly anybody in the country watched.

But in the real world, enough Americans have embraced our troops and supported them to put us on the verge of victory in Iraq. These Americans believe in the basic goodness of our troops. Go visit a toy store if you doubt the level of that commitment. I don't believe you'll see even one Corie the Human Shield Inaction Figure in stock.

UPDATE: An article about the Army action figures.