With regard to whether we’re “winning” or “losing” in Iraq, this excerpt from a letter in today’s Times echoes my thoughts exactly:
The terms “success†and “failure†are meaningless with regard to Iraq. It is high time that we stopped glorifying our Iraq endeavor as “a war.†It is an invasion, pure and simple, and there is no clearly discernible enemy whom we can defeat or to whom we can lose.
Every time the president or someone else utters the word “victory,” I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. “Victory” is as relevant to this situation as geometry is to English class.
It’s positively Orwellian.
I think this always comes into stark clarity when the president is asked to define “victory” (that is to say when we can leave Iraq). He always avoids the question with an answer like “when I say so”.
Yeah, I heard Bush say on TV the other day that he thinks we can still “win.” And totally involuntarily, I just yelled, “Win what?!?!?” How will we even know that we’ve won? When al Qaeda never attacks us again? When the insurgency is over? When Iraq is a peaceful, secular democracy? The problem is, the simple matter of our being there is an impediment to every one of these goals. Disaster. Shame.