Can Anyone Define a Military Victory in Iraq?
by Cenk Uygur

The White House now defines victory in Iraq as "an Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself." Could you imagine if that's how they sold the war in the first place? If they said we want to invade a country so that we can make it stable and able to defend itself?

How's that for ironic?

But for the purposes of this post, I want to get beyond the ever-changing, ever-absurd rationalizations for this monstrous war. Let's take them at their word and assume their goal has always been to invade Iraq so that they could allow it to defend itself.

But what they are describing is clearly a political goal and a political victory. How about a military victory? We're still in there with over 140,000 troops. How can they win militarily in this battle?

Are they supposed to defeat the Iraqis? Or help them? Are they supposed to fight the Shiites? Or help them? Are they supposed to destroy the Sunnis? Or help them?

If their job is to fight the Al Qaeda forces in Iraq, then they are fighting the wrong people. Al Qaeda is a tiny percentage of the fighters in Iraq. If they were all killed, you would still have the exact same problem in Iraq. Baghdad would be no more stable than it is now. There would still be Shiite death squads and a raging Sunni insurgency.

Even if you knew who the Al Qaeda fighters were, you engaged them in open battle and completely defeated them, you would still have an Iraq that is not stable or able to defend itself. Does that mean that victory in Iraq is completely unrelated to the terrorists?

Of course it does. But it also means that victory is completely unrelated to fighting and winning any military battles at all. Even if we won every battle we ever fought - and we have - we would still have an out of control war in Iraq - and we do.

Who do we want our army to kill? What land do we want them to conquer? What military battle do we want them to win?

No one in America can answer this question. And yet, we keep sending our men and women into the middle of this quagmire for this inherently non-military mission.

President Bush is fond of saying that Democrats misunderstand the war on terror. He says they think it is a police action, when in fact it is a war. Ramzi Yousef organized the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. We did an investigation of where he might be, nabbed him in Pakistan, brought him to justice in the US and he has been in a maximum security prison in Colorado for many years now.

In contrast, Osama bin Laden organized the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. We started a war against Afghanistan to capture him but only sent about 15,000 troops in. Then after we lost him, we got distracted and started another war against a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Now, we are stuck in the middle of two wars we cannot win as we desperately try to stabilize both of those countries while Osama is sitting comfortably in Pakistan, laughing his ass off.

Now, you tell me, are you convinced that war is a better strategy than "police action"?

Our generals on the ground have said over and over that the conflict in Iraq does not have a military solution and that it must be resolved through a political solution. So, then what are our troops doing on the ground? What is their military mission?

There is no answer for this. That is why we must withdraw our troops in Iraq. We literally don't know what they're doing there.