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What is your definition of
"victory?"
Orlando Sentinel
Kathleen Parker
December 23, 2005
"Victory" is the new Clintonian "is" word. As in, it depends on what your
definition of "victory" is. Does victory in Iraq mean when every single
insurgent is dead? Wait, no, we don't say "insurgent" anymore. The new
preferred words are "Saddamist" and "rejectionist." So … when they're
all dead?
Or when every single adult Iraqi is a registered voter and participant in
the democratic process? When Iraqi security forces have total control over
every town and byway? Or does victory mean when the United States can claim to
have kept her word to the Iraqi people?
So go the questions in the wake of President Bush's recent speeches —
four in two weeks — about our role in Iraq. Now that Iraq's historic
elections have passed, and were successful by any measure, are we there
yet?
Reading Bush's mind is busy work. With stubborn consistency, he has stuck by
his guns on when the United States will pull out of Iraq.
"As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," he says. "We will not leave until
victory has been achieved," he says. But what does that mean? Given the
flexibility implicit in such statements, it's hard to know what he intends. Or
whether we can mark our calendars with indelible ink.
The truest answer probably is the one we don't care to hear. Bush doesn't
know when we're going to leave Iraq, and he doesn't know when victory will be
achieved — or even, precisely, what it is. Because, among other reasons,
how could he?
There won't be a white-flag moment. There is no endpoint in a war against an
idea. Most likely victory will be a feeling, a tipping point where enough
rights outnumber wrongs.
That time will come when, as Bush has indicated, Iraq is constitutionally
organized and physically secure enough to manage its own fate. This past week's
election is a significant step toward the first part of that goal.
It is no small matter, moreover, to have envisioned oneself the agent of
freedom in an oppressed region. Someone along the way told Bush that he could
do anything, and he believed it.
Tempering such grandiosity with self-restraint is the trick, of course, and
pride is the man behind the curtain. How does Bush declare victory when he
declared it two years ago on the deck of an aircraft carrier?
How does he declare victory when Howard Dean and Democrats keep insisting
the war is "unwinnable"? How does he declare victory when the decorated war
veteran and formerly hawkish Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., insists we leave
now?
Staying the course is no one's easy road, and Bush is his own worst enemy
some days. He seems tired of his own slogans and platitudes. We won't cut and
run. We'll stand down when they stand up. Shift to the left, shift to the
right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight.
In one of his speeches, Bush seemed to lose interest in his own text and
didn't bother to complete a sentence about the Iraqi elections. Weary-looking
and gray, he has aged dramatically in five years. And why wouldn't he?
Few have had to field as many catastrophes as this president — the
9/11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina — all
while his every move critiqued by armchair generals.
As the tipping point goes, Bush may be closer than we think. Saddam is on
trial, a democratically elected government is in place; the Iraqi people seem
ready to tackle their own future.
If it looks like victory, maybe it is.
Contact Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel at kparker@kparker.com.
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