What's a "Win"?
Over the last month or so the Democrat's criticism of the Iraq War reached a crescendo, only to be followed by a near campaign style counter-offensive by the Administration. Should we bring the troops home "immediately"? Should we have a timetable? Is there a "plan to win the war"? What is it? Do we "stay the course"? That's what everyone's talking about, and it's all very interesting. But.
As I think forward, I can't avoid the conclusion that it doesn't matter. Oh, what happens in Iraq matters plainly enough, but that's not what I mean. What I mean and what I predict is that regardless of the circumstances under which we eventually withdraw our troops from Iraq, there will be no political consensus in the US as to what it means. My bet is that if and when we are ever able to leave the country, turning total control of it over to the new Iraqi Government and it's security forces, nevertheless there will be substantial criticism of the effort and the end game because there will be no consensus over how to define what it means to "win". If we can't agree whether or not we're "winning" today, why should we expect that we'll ever agree upon whether we won or lost?
For me, a stable Iraq that neither aids terrorists nor develop WMD's is a win. I think that's increasingly achievable but not inevitable. If we leave Iraq under a facade that this has been achieved, similar to the facade under which we left South Vietnam, and the country devolves into something that collapses into anarchy, then we've got a loss.
But in this limited sense, it doesn't really matter if Bush "stays the course" and turns out to be right to do so. The Republicans will claim victory and the Democrats will claim balderdash. Anyone thinking that some day Democrats will say "Gee -- we won. Who'd have thunk it?" is advised to not hold their breath. And if the Iraqi state fails when we leave, anyone who thinks the GOP will say "Gee -- Iraq's a mess now that we left -- sorry about that Chief" will be smoking some damn good shit.
I think some folks expect we'll have a resolution to this eventually, but I'm not one of them.
[Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam.]