For some time now, conservatives had a tough go at defining “victory” in the context of Iraq. Anyway, it seems to waylay this problem, the new line among conservatives is that we’ve already won. Ilan Goldberg does a fairly good job of succinctly describing “victory”:
It’s an interesting definition of “victory.” I guess you can define victory as more than 4,000 American fatalities, more than 30,000 wounded, probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, millions of Iraqis displaced, $1-$3 trillion in costs to the U.S. economy, an empowered Iran, an unaddressed threat in Afghanistan, and massive damage to America’s image around the world. All for a war that did not actually achieve its original objectives – eliminate a WMD threat that wasn’t there, eliminate a terrorism threat that wasn’t there, and spread democracy throughout the Middle East. I guess we can define “victory” that way. Probably wouldn’t be my definition though.
I’d just add that even if security conditions improve massively into 2011, all these things still will be true. Under the circumstances, I think it would be pretty hard to configure a definition of “victory” under which we will have “won”.
