I just had another thought about citizen involvement in the GWOT. Many have long contended that organized sports is an emotional substitute for warfare. Consider how involved fans become with their teams. They even buy at great expense "official" clothing and wear it to show their support. Teams cultivate their fans, at least smart ones do.

However, unlike WWII, with this real war, no such "official" involvement exists. And given press coverage of the war, you cannot even stay reliably informed of its progress — unless you follow blogs, of course, but that is a highly niche audience. The only box score you get is how many soldiers and Iraqi civilians have been blown to bits each day. This is like following a team by reading just the daily injury reports (which true fans do read).

To push the analogy to the breaking point. Think of the NFL players in the backfield on a defensive stand waiving to their arms to get the fans to scream. Think of the effect of a home team quickly falling behind in a game, so they lose their "home-field advantage." The obvious analogy here is to efforts to support the troops, etc.

But here is where the analogy breaks down, but in an illuminating way: In asymmetric warfare, unlike in sports, terrorists are hoping they do not have to defeat the opposing players on the field. They just have to sufficiently demoralize the "fans" until their players get "redeployed." So their actions are aimed at the fans, through the media, as much as at their opponents on the field. Which is all the more reason why cultivating fan or, rather, citizen involvement with a real war is even more important than with war-subsitutes like organized sports. With American wars prior to Korea, this seems to have been better understood by the administration in power.

(Civil comments only please)