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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Victory In Iraq: What is it?

Part One Of...Well...More Than One Part...

Day after day, person after person, usually someone in the Bush administration or who otherwise supports the occupation of Iraq, is asked a question phrased similar to this:

“When will our troops be able to return home?”

The answer, invariably, comes back:

“When the ‘job’ is done.”

Or:

“When we achieve ‘victory’.”

To me, those answers raise the question of the definitions of ‘victory’ and ‘job’. I have no idea what those words mean in this context. I have scoured the Internet for a couple of years now, in search of an answer. I have come across a few, but they are less than appropriate I think:

When Saddam is gone.

When Iraq has an open election.

When Iraq has a government that is a constitutional democracy.

Each of those above conditions have been met. However, after each of these events occur, the ‘job’ is still not done. We have not achieved victory.

There is one other response that I’ve come across, and it presents its own problems:

Yes, Saddam is gone and Iraq has elected a constitutional democracy, but we can’t leave until the country is stable.

Stable? Iraq? Those who offer the above condition for victory seem to lack access to a World History text book. Iraq has not been stable since its existence, not without having a totalitarian regime anyway.


Next time we'll take a little look at the history of Iraq and how it became Iraq with the borders as we now know it.

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