Winning in Iraq? Timelines and Benchmarks

Last week when Howard Dean declared that the war in Iraq was unwinnable, he was forced to back down from his statements. This week a cover story in the Weekly Standard declares the war is winnable. With all the debate, no one seems to be discussing the obvious question: what does winning mean? This isn’t a war fought against a government; it isn’t a war fought for territory. It is part of the war on terror but that is a larger issue that extends beyond Iraq. What specifically does winning in Iraq mean? The best answer would seem to be that we are fighting for stability and democracy in Iraq. Which is fine, but how will we know when we have accomplished these objectives? Democracy is an abstraction and stability is relative.

We need to be engaged in a national conversation about what defines winning. The talk in Washington is now about troop withdrawals. It seems increasingly clear there will be some move in that direction as we get closer to the midterm elections. Timelines, although politically popular, only take into account half the equation: how long Americans are willing to stay in Iraq. The other more important question is what needs to happen on the ground to reach the point where it makes sense to begin withdrawing the troops and, at some point down the road, declare victory. We need benchmarks that will let us judge how we are doing and hold politicians accountable. These benchmarks could be anything from the number of trained Iraqi troops to measures of safety to measures related to elections.

The problem is that setting benchmarks aren’t in the interest of either party. Benchmarks would force the Democrats to, you know, actually have a plan and to acknowledge that immediate withdrawal of the troops isn’t an option. And benchmarks would leave Bush vulnerable to being held accountable if the benchmarks weren’t met. This is a terrible political failure. Without an honest conversation about what it means to win the war, one thing is clear: we can’t win.