After September “the eleventh” (as Mr. B likes to call that terrible day) americans put allot of flags on their cars. Mr B. had a cool approval rating, after all he promised to ‘smoke them out’ those people that were behind the most shoking act of Terror in history.
That “War on Terror” stirred some strong emotions.
Those needed directions, so some people thought. And it worked:
When the War on Iraq started half of the people believed there were Iraqies in those planes. The war in Iraq became this part of the campaign on Terror. The former regime in Bagdhad was as bad as the one in North Korea or elsewhere in the world. Just that they had nothing to with the Terror act of Sept 2001 nor were there any real weapons of mass destrcutions that could be found.
With all this the american public would have no problem with.
As long as the US would have won the war. Officially they did so a very long time ago. Only problem is that the peace needs more soldiers and money than the war. And it’s not going anywhere.
There were always ‘milestones’ in the US view that would make things better: The hand over of sovereignity (done in a coup 24 hour before it was scheduled to dodge an onslaught of Terror) or the elections or the building of the government.
Americans like a success story. They like the winner. They were not winning in Vietnam, and they will not in Iraq.