"Maybe there still is a real plan for victory. Maybe the Iraqis need us there just a little longer before they get it together."

I trust that Michael isn't slipping into the this-is-a-bad-war-because-we're-losing camp. There are plenty of reasons that this is a bad war without giving it the implicit legitimacy that Michael's "maybes" suggest (this very article mentions 2,471 fantastic reasons).

There isn't, and never has been, a "plan for victory". There was/is a plan for conquest, but that's hardly the same thing in this context. Shouldn't we reserve the noble concept of "victory" for more appropriate endeavors, like declared wars against people who have attacked us and can defend themselves?

Nor have the Iraqis ever "need[ed] us there". What the Iraqis need is the space to work out their own problems in a way that serves their interests and desires first and foremost, without pressure from outside parties who smell an easy prize, much less an armed foreign juggernaut grinding these people under the wheels of "democracy" in their own land. The only people who "need us there" are Halliburton, Lockheed, Raytheon, etc.

I know you probably understand this already, Michael, and that your "maybes" were ill-considered, but the Iraq War isn't bad because we're losing. It's bad because it's wrong.

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa12_murtha/PRiraqtrascript.html

You're probably right. I'm sure the ex-Marine war hero Jack Murtha was just blinded by partisanship when he suggested Bush has no vision or plan for victory in Iraq.

Go screw yourself you weak dick jack ass! Better yet, why don't you sign up and go search for some IEDs since you dare to even suggest it is a noble cause.

Go ahead and cancel my subscription too. I've had it with you yellow bellied chicken shits.

Shouldn't we reserve the noble concept of "victory" for more appropriate endeavors, like declared wars against people who have attacked us and can defend themselves?

Um, shouldn't you look up the word "victory" in a dictionary before going around trying to re-define it?

Michael Scherer's questions in "May's honor roll of dead soldiers" are spot-on. I have never heard the administration articulate succinctly tactics that tie to a strategy that, in turn, ties to an overall vision for what we hope to accomplish in Iraq.

More recent mantras such as "we will stand down when Iraqi troops stand up" or "one hundred years from now, this will be seen as wise action" [I paraphrase] are not definitive or orienting enough in the face of today's questions.

As such, I am left with sense, as I think are many Americans, that we are only there -- our soldiers are only there dying -- because no one has the political courage to do anything definitive, either to say enough is enough and pull out or to say that we won't achieve whatever goals we are presumed to have unless we put more troops on the ground and just get it done. Instead, it seems that the war is lurching on costing us more than $10 billion a month, the lives of Americans (and Iraqis) for that matter taking us no further toward any goal, but only keeping at bay political blame and infighting. 'Til when? The next elections, perhaps? As long as this administration is in power. It is unclear.

For those who say simply that this war was morally wrong because we weren't attacked, a statement with which I have always agreed by the way with complete conviction, we're in there so the best you can hope for is a conclusion that is as good as possible. As good as possible is a term we may be able to agree on as Americans, by the way, but for Iraqis the ending will probably just be another chapter in ongoing hell.

In my mind, if there was a time when we had the best (of very dim) chances of prevailing, we had about 6 months at the beginning of this war -- and I felt this way at the time, not just in hindsight -- to lay on heavy troops (more than we did) completely pacify the place and get it as right as it could be gotten. Now, I think it's definitely too late and I agree with General Odom that indeed it is time for us to cut and run because our presence incites violence and we aren't ultimately stopping the civil war, it is just going on in a different way perhaps at a somewhat mitigated pace.

This war, apart from being wrong, was always bad strategy. To me, it was eminently clear we wouldn't have the stamina as a country to maintain Iraqi society and that we would create a breeding ground and/or recruiting ground for more Kenya-Tanzania Embassy/USS Cole/9-11 style Bin Laden jihadists. Well actually, we might have had the stamina to last a lot longer if we hadn't been lied to about why we were going and how likely it would be to turn very difficult.

The Republicans own this whole debacle and the Democrats allowed themselves to be railroaded into it. The Democrats are so concerned about being perceived weak on defense that they don't want to be seen to be the ones who end this unsuccessful war. So we have no effective opposition.

If I were running the opposition, I would not now focus on the rightness or wrongness of it, I would just point out that it was horribly bad strategy compounded by incompetent execution. And, indeed, how can we ask more men or women to be the last to die for a failed policy? It is time to leave -- and we will take a lot of deserved lumps in the leaving.

it. I guess it doesn't help the dead soldiers very much but the only other place I hear the names of the dead is on JIm Leher's news program on PBS.

It seems right that we should make such lists. Please repeat it unti it is no longer necessary.

You're absolutely right, Pyrian. I shouldn't go arbitrarily changing definitions. I tend to think of "victory" as a grand, positive term for winning, and I don't see anything grand or positive about the Iraq War. But that's my view, not ours, and I don't have the right to suggest that "we" define any word beyond what the dictionary says. I should have said "I PREFER to reserve the noble concept of "victory" for more appropriate endeavors, like declared wars against people who have attacked us and can defend themselves" Thank you for the correction.

Todd, I appreciate your point of view, though I can't agree. I've never been a believer in pandering to harmful attitudes, and I feel that to sell withdrawal to the American people as necessitated by "horribly bad strategy compounded by incompetent execution" legitimizes the concept of intervention. Iraq is bad enough, but if we don't convey to the American people that the policy of intervention in the affairs of other countries is responsible for the hatred and enmity the world has for America then we're merely setting ourselves up for the next one.

Instead, shouldn't we be directing our efforts toward educating America about just how frequently and disastrously our meddling in the business of other countries has blown back on us, not to mention the myriad lives it has destroyed? Any legitimization of the Iraq War, no matter how indirect, perpetuates the myth that America's actions in the world, even when they prove brutal and murderous, are actuated by just and noble motives, despite the fact that we condemn other countries in the harshest possible terms (or invade them) for carrying out similar actions. Until we can convince the American people to force our leaders to abide by the standards they impose on the rest of the world we'll continue to intervene whenever we feel like it, for whatever self-serving reason, no matter how many innocents are killed or maimed.

There are a couple of books by William Blum that you might find interesting: "Freeing the World to Death" and "Rogue State". Both build a strong and convincing case for applying the standards we insist the rest of the world follow to ourselves in order to ameliorate the effects of our actions over the last hundred or so years. As he points out, "Suggesting to Americans that their country has a compelling lust for political, economic and military hegemony over the rest of the world, divorced from any moral considerations, is akin to telling them of one's UFO abduction - except that they're more likely to believe the abduction story." That willingness to believe, contrary to mountains of evidence, that we're good and they're bad fuels the Iraq War just as it has fueled our murder sprees from the Philippines to Korea to Vietnam (and lots of points between).