Pressure, from Main Street to Capitol Hill, is building for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wants to stay in Iraq until Iraq can sustain a democracy. He explained Tuesday, "We must be careful not to give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply hold on long enough, that they can outlast us." Making a similar point, Majority Leader Bill Frist proclaimed yesterday that America doesn't need an exit strategy in Iraq, America needs a victory strategy. Rumsfeld and Frist seem to be saying that the attainment of a clear objective, rather than an arbitrary box on the calendar, should be the deciding factor regarding when it's time to end a military campaign.

But what constitutes victory in Iraq? And does our victory depend less on the performance of American soldiers than it does on the good citizenship of Iraqis? These are important questions. I don't know the answers. I'm hoping that the readership does--or at least has some ideas on the subject.

What is your threshold for victory in Iraq?
A. We already achieved victory when we ousted Saddam Hussein's government
B. Victory will be achieved if a regime that is friendly to U.S. interests remains in power
C. Victory will be achieved if we establish a free, stable, and democratic Iraq
D. Both B & C
E. Victory will be achieved if we cripple the terrorists within Iraq and set up a beachhead of democracy in Iraq that spreads throughout the region
F. Fill in your own answer

G) Convert them to christianity and take their oil.

Victory in Iraq would be when they have a viable security force.

As far as I remember, this was our stated goal: eliminating the threat that Iraq's WMD would be used against us in a terrorist attack. Right? Well then, we had achieved victory before going to war.

Iraq is a battle in the war on Islamofascists who sponsor and implement terrorism. A battle is more or less a victory, depending on the relative strength of the contending parties before and after the battle.

This is not a symetrical war. Our side's main vulnerability is its modern, utopian, and materialistic political thought which is like a mental disease that does not allow it to face facts: facts like "some others will hate us no matter what we do for them materially" and "religious differences are very important differences." That the French have these problems a little more than the rest of the West means we can call it the "French disease."

The problem with assessing the outcome of the Iraqi battle is that we have to assess whether the battle has made the West's dementia worse. Since the only cures for the disease with any hope of success would seem to require time and repeated confrontations with reality, any result that buys us more time is a victory. The more time bought the greater the victory.

One complication is that any action we take might make the dementia worse. But we can never know whether our actions made the disease worse or whether it just exposed the depths of the existing problem. I think the problem is severe, has been progressive and requires dramatic interventions, so I think our situation was terrible to begin with and that this battle has, so far, only marginally improved that position by giving us a few more years.

The paradox is that if we had the will to stay for centuries, like the Crusaders, we could leave tomorrow and say we have won the war. But, without that will, we must hold on and keep the Islamofascist terrorists occupied until we do develop the willpower to protect our liberties from their assaults.

So the answer is F "the longer we stay the greater the victory."

"C". Why? Because letting his son take over would have been like killing Hitler, then handing Germany over to the guy that organized the concentration camps. To truely remove what Saddam was meant removing his government, removing the government meant replacing it, or letting the first group that popped up take over, which wouldn't have been Iraqi's. It would be nice of it was also supportive of US interests, but not necessary, as long as it didn't turn around and go against everyone's interests. Any other option is pure delusional bullshit.

Oh, and you know they recently found a map to those non-existant WMD?

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/16/122915.shtml

Will be real interesting if it turns out to actually show locations that have actual materials, not to mention the other interesting documents... Of course, I am sure the anti-war people will simply scream that they are all fake, never mind that Allawi was saying such documents existed (at least the terrorist connections ones), and he had seen them, almost a year ago.

I believe President Bush has already defined victory in Iraq: when Iraqi security forces can stand up we'll stand down. This is an interesting definition because it implies that the U.S. military is just functioning as a provisional Iraq security force and the quip "we're fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here," is total propaganda. It's always refreshing when President Bush ridicules his own foreign policy.

Another common sense post, Dan. Thank you.
Either 'D' or DocMcG's 'F' (see above).

If I might offer a clarification: this is not simply "the Iraq war." Iraq is one theater in GWOT [global war on terrorism], aka World War IV. I've also heard GWOT referred to as "a civil war within Islam" in which the US clearly is taking the side of Muslim societies which want to participate in liberal democracy. I'm still trying to grasp the bigness of what we're fighting, what constitutes 'victory', and what it will take to achieve it myself....

D and E, so B C E. hehe

There can be no victory in Iraq, so just declare it and come home, like in Nam.

B

B through E. Actually, E flows from acheiving C. Rumsfeld and Frist are right. To do anything less would be to emulate what we did in Vietnam; i.e., to give up and surrender the people we're trying to help to the enemy. The difference between this and what happened in Vietnam, though, is that when we left South Vietnam to the communists, the communists didn't then feel emboldened to make attacks on our own soil, as the terrorists surely will if we give them that opportunity by quitting now.