"Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed," he said. "And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence. ... But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives."Good. I've mentioned my distress of using violence as a metric for the success of the surge.
Before the November election, Bush insisted to the media that the United States was "absolutely winning" the war. In December, he said the United States was neither winning nor losing, then clarified that he meant the U.S. was not succeeding as fast as he wanted.
The White House has repeatedly characterized success as an Iraq that can govern, sustain and defend itself.
The president was not "stepping back" at all from that goal in his speech, Bush spokesman Tony Snow said later.
And I clearly stated as early as November 29, 2003, that the purpose of our fight is to help the Iraqis become capable of putting down the terrorism and insurgents:
The main goal, however, is to get Iraqi security forces on line so they carry out the bulk of the routine security missions. As we reduce our combat forces, we’ll need fewer convoys to supply them and so will suffer fewer ambushes. Our support troops are facing a higher proportion of losses than is normal since our combat troops are very effective and the Baathists know it. They avoid our combat troops when they can, preferring to hit vulnerable convoys run by supply clerks and the like. Even with MP or infantry escorts, these are easier targets. So our casualties will go down with fewer troops as long as Iraqi forces increase. I worry that focus on attacks per day will become the false metric of success. We don’t need to reduce it to zero to call our invasion a success. As long as Iraqi forces can take on the task, with our help, we can scale back. Like I’ve said before, allies of ours around the world fight insurgents or terrorists without 130,000 Americans on the ground helping them.
Victory is not about making sure we kill the last enemy. If this is the standard, Britain withdrew from India about sixty years too soon and should still be fighting various insurgents and terrorists that still kill Indians.
We are winning this war. In 2006, our rate of progress slowed to a rate too slow for our home front to support, but we have revamped our approach for new circumstances that emerged since February 2006.
I know the loyal opposition is determined to lose this war. But when we win it anyway, will the loyal opposition deny that anything in Iraq short of Vermont-like pastoral calm is victory?
