Not a political question, but wondering what people in goernment mean when they say we can still win the war. McCain said it this morning. Bush says it often.
Are they suggesting we can forcibly get the resistance to change their minds or kill all of the terrorists?
This is a serious question, what is the definition of “win” in that context?
Thanks, Steven.
No clear definition has ever been released by the Administration.
I don’t even know if Bush knows what he means.
I’m not trying to fight the hyothetical, but I don’t think that this question has a General Questions-type factual answer.
As far as I’m aware, there is no document, report, speech or any other text in which the administration or anyone else has defined a set of victory conditions for our involvement in Iraq.
We had achieved our primary military objectives by the time that Bush flew out to the aircraft carrier to speak under the “mission accomplished” banner. However, the reporting I have read has indicated that we had weak planning for the post-combat phase, and what plans and objectives we did have changed significantly over the course of our occupation.
A factual answer (and only slightly cynical) answer may be that Bush, McCain and the others are leaving it undefined so that they will be able to define any slightly or better positive outcome as “victory.”
Beyond that, this veers strongly into great debates territory.
What were the goals again? Depose Saddam Hussein and establish a self-sustaining government, presumably chosen by the people? Establish bases of American troops in Iraq to be a presence in the Middle East and its oil?
I don’t mean to get political either, just trying to outline what was represented as the goal(s).
I dunno where this question fits best - and think it has been raised before - maybe even by me. But I know there is no factual answer. It strikes me as amazing - near unbelievable - that certain folks keep using this word as tho it is universally and consistently understood, never hinting at exactly what it means. Heck, they never even tell us exactly who the hell we are going to defeat. (Don’t you have to defeat someone to “win” a “war”?)
I believe the admin would say something about a peaceful, democratic, self-governing Iraq.
IMO, just about the best we could hope for is getting out of there as quickly as possible, spilling as little additional cash and blood as possible, and hoping to contain as much unpleasantness resulting from our actions as possible in that hemisphere.
It can mean whatever people want it to mean. Certainly deposing Saddam was part of it, but deposing him and ending up with something worse is not much of a win.
Ideally, the idea was to depose Saddam and replace him with a modern, US-friendly government that had the full support of the people, with peace, prosperity, and civil rights for all. And I think some people in the administration actually believed in the beginning that this was achieveable.
Now, it’s impossible to define.
I think the objective was twofold:
Well, we can still lose. In Viet Nam we lost because somebody else won who was our enemy.
If we pull out now we will neither win or lose. If we wait too long and someone topples our puppet government, whether it’s Sunni or Shiite, we will have lost.
Winning is any outcome that doesn’t make us look like losers to the rest of the world. Whether or not that is possible at this point is grist for GD.
Winning is establishing a stable democratic government that can defend itself.
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So be it. I think this can best be discussed in Great Debates.
Moved.
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One goal was to get rid of Iraq’s WMDs and prevent it from threatening the USA. Since it had no WMD or terrorist ties to begin with, I think we can safely say that mission has been accomplished. :rolleyes:
Bush often expressed the hope that a free and democratic Iraq would be a beacon to the Arab world, and a catalyst for regional change. Since Iraq looks more like Somalia than anything else, I’d say that isn’t going so well. In fact, it’s going so badly that I think in the end, “winning” will be any outcome that allows the American government to get out and claim to the public that this wasn’t an embarrassing defeat, and that the fault was with the Iraqi people, not us.
While we’re at it, can we get that in the United States, too?
I suspect that, to Bush, it means “I leave office with a legacy and reputation superior to every other President since Jefferson and Lincoln.”
Either that, or it’s “Me and my corporate elite buddies make out like gangbusters in the ensuing mess.”
He’s still got two years; things could change.
“Republicans win domestic elections.”
Actually there were at least two, possibly three, mutually incompatible sets of goals, none of which was publicly stated at the time of the invasion. See here.
Sorry if I posted in the wrong forum, I was naive enough to think there might actually be a factual answer.
As to most of the answers above I realize the initial reasons (WMD, etc) but I was refering to the way you hear it phrased now. If it really is that ambiguous I wonder why isn’t Bush ever asked what he means by “winning” or “finishing the job”?
That’s a good, clear objective. That ought to be achievable in 50 years or so, too.
Perhaps, but it would hardly be a victory because a democratically elected Iraq government that can defend itself would be capable of kicking us out by force, and be implacably, murderously hostile to America. More hostile than Iran, by far, and I don’t know anyone who regards the overthrow of the American backed Shah in Iran to be an American victory.