Victory and Defeat in Iraq

April 24, 2007

Victory and defeat are the frustrating keywords for the current debate about the Iraq War. VP Dick Cheney today accused Democrats of defeatism:

"What's most troubling about Senator Reid's comments yesterday is his defeatism," Cheney said. "Indeed, last week he said the war is already lost. And the timetable legislation that he is now pursuing would guarantee defeat."

And George Bush never misses an opportunity to mention that he is in favor of victory.

From their comments one might get the idea that the Bush administration sees the Iraq War as analogous to a baseball game that has unfortunately gone to extra innings. At some point, it is hoped, we will score the necessary points and the game will be over. At that point we will be the victors. Democrats who wanted to throw in the towel in the 15th inning will then look foolish.

The problem with this view of victory is that the Iraq War is not a game where at the end somebody wins. The language of victory and defeat is conspicuously inadequate for talking about the war. From an international perspective many of our central goals for the war (such as the encouragement of democracy and political liberalization in the Middle East) are dead. The US has lost immeasurable prestige and clout around the world. At home we have lost 3,200+ soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars. Not to mention the horrors being lived through by millions of Iraqis. These are all concrete LOSSES. Even if tomorrow the Bush dream came true and the insurgents walked out of their underground hideouts with their hands in the air.. we would find ourselves in a hole with little positive to say about our effort.

Even as these losses mount, the administration sticks to its language of victory. But what does victory mean? The word has already been defined downward so far that it is unrecognizable. Our best case scenario involves a Shi'a led government that would be allied to Iran and hard to distinguish from Lebanon's Hezbollah. But it is hard to shake the conviction that what we are fighting for is simply that word: victory. Bush appears to want more than anything else to be "victorious".. even if the word is emptied of all strategic significance. But he will not have lost a war.. he will simply have drug us into the biggest mess anyone can remember.