If the typical question for a war supporter is, “How much longer do we stick with an ineffective policy in Iraq?” the typical response is, “Until we achieve victory.”
War supporters labeled themselves the “Victory Caucus” a while back. When John McCain talks about his support for Bush’s Iraq policy, he insists we need to let U.S. troops “win.” When the president himself talked about the war this week, he emphasized the need to “achieve victory.”
Slate’s Fred Kaplan tried to get a handle on what these conservatives mean when they use the word “victory.” Given that the administration and its allies have changed the definition a few times over the last five or so years, it’s a little tricky, but Kaplan found that by Bush’s own standards, “victory” is nowhere in sight.
[B]y the Bush administration’s own standards of success, laid out in the president’s speech and the NSC’s strategy review, we are no closer to victory now than we were when those documents were drafted. Iraq is not unified, it is only superficially democratic, it cannot govern itself, its security forces cannot provide for the safety of its citizens, and it remains more of a haven for terrorists than an ally in the war against them.
Gen. Petraeus has said many times that there is no strictly military victory to be had in Iraq. The goal of the surge — and, at this point, of the U.S. military presence generally — is to provide enough security, especially in Baghdad, to let the Iraqi factions settle their sectarian disputes and form a unified government. If this political goal isn’t achieved, then the surge will have been for naught. And lately, Petraeus has expressed disappointment that the Iraqis have made so little progress on that path.
Just as importantly, the president has defined “victory” in such a way as to make it practically impossible.
Noting that the surge is ending, the militias in the Sunni Awakening are angry and threatening a strike, and Sadr-announced ceasefire is unraveling, Kaplan explained that even by measures articulated by Bush, “[V]ictory is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny.”
And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about.
A White House “fact sheet” titled “Five Years Later: New Strategy Improving Security in Iraq,” posted on the occasion of the invasion’s fifth anniversary, states: “Defeating the enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home. The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad also want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities.”
And so, once again, President Bush tries to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11. Once again, he pretends (or does he somehow believe?) that al-Qaida is “the enemy in Iraq.” Would that things there were so clear-cut. One big difficulty about fighting in Iraq is that there is no single enemy. The overarching problems are disorder, sectarian strife, a weak central authority, and the absence of legitimate politics in the provinces. AQI is a menacing force, but it is also a small one. If it were destroyed tomorrow, Iraq would be only slightly less messy. (In one way, it might be more messy, at least in the short-run, as the Sunni insurgents who are now our allies would be expected to resume their fight against us after our common enemy is vanquished.)
Just as Bush mistakenly treats Iraq’s myriad insurgencies as if they were one — thus making them appear (and perhaps making their warriors feel) mightier than they really are — so he also elevates the stakes of the war, and the requirements of victory, above and beyond any prospect that’s feasible.
Is it me, or are the arguments in support of staying the course getting weaker as time goes on? At this point, the best the president can do is argue that al Qaeda will seize Iraq’s oil supply and use the money to buy WMD — a claim so specious that the White House couldn’t defend it.
So, we’re left with vacuous palaver about “victory,” which sounds great, just so long as no one asks what that means.