Does "winning the hearts and minds" really work? Honest question.
Sometimes.
In the long run, yes.
Slowly, it does work. And it makes a profound and fundamental change in the whole environment. But it does take time.
It's a question that has an unyielding caveat to it. If the program goes on below the radar, and the MSM doesn't tumble to it, then it will of course have a good chance of working. In this case, I suspect that the MSM is too busy declaring defeat in Iraq to have devoted much poison to this 'well'.
The MSM knows that it is all a question of recruiting. If they suddenly started a campaign printing that "everyone in the region knows" that accepting help from the Americans is treachery to the national pride, and that only puppets help the imperialists, then eventually, under the propaganda bombardment, all of the good done by our help would sour.
The enemies of the U.S., as well as the Democratic party, (redundancy, I know), realize that the only way to keep recruits coming is to subvert and nullify anything that they perceive is an effective gain in our war on terror.
It is a matter of momentum. The liberals sense that the declaration of defeat in Iraq is enough to swing power their way. Their interests coincide with that of terrorists right now, and they figure that they can "get away with" the covert support by finessing that "it isn't really support for terrorism, since we obviously support our troops". It's simply that they must oppose everything that those troops have fought and died for, in order to make the world safe for re-distribution.
Nope.
Never did, never will.
When the body count hits about 1/3 of the gross population, they start to see things a different way. I don't know why the body count has to be that high. It's just what history teaches. That's all.
I'd prefer we used the Roman approach "Let them hate so long as they fear"
It's a lot less work and is more effective.
It should be called the "ATLAS" project because we are attempting to carry the whole world on our backs.