Plan for Success

It simply astounds me that as a matter of point, George Bush refuses to state what the U.S. definition of "success" or "victory" in Iraq is. The official position is that saying we want to leave by a certain DATE, this gives "comfort and aid to the enemy." Blah, blah...but fine. So don't set a date. Set goals - small ones, big ones, intermediate milestones, etc. Have a plan to work towards those goals, and contingency plan for those elements with the most risk.

In short, do what anyone with any sense for getting something done would do.

Can you imagine if your boss (in Bush's case, the American people) asked you how your project was coming along, and your response was, "It's fine...no idea when I'll finish it though. Setting a date would give aid and comfort to our competition."

OK, no one would say that. But the point, I think, is valid enough. It's actually quite a dumb thing to artificially set a date without working out the steps to completion. But to do that, you have to know what "completion" means - what is the launch date, the end date to the work that we're doing over in Iraq? What are the exact things that need to be done to reduce our troop level to...what? Zero? A small force akin to what we have in places like Germany and South Korea?

It's just the basic analysis like this that makes it evidently clear, to my addled mind, that the reason the U.S. won't publicly set a plan for victory or success in Iraq is for one or more of the following reasons:

Keeping Secrets Our internal definition of success includes some controversial things, like a permanent U.S. force in Iraq.

Incompetence Despite all evidence to the contrary, it's safe to assume the administration clearly hasn't simply sat around with their thumbs up their butts - they've planned, staffed and taken some deliberate action since invading in 2003. What's also clear is that they have pretty much guessed wrong in every major instance. [Such gem examples include disbanding the Iraqi Army, which not only led to a huge new angry group of people (who had their own weapons) but also excluding the only trained individuals for the NEW Iraqi army, which has struggled to become more competent than, say, Costa Rica's Army.

Fear The only thing that seems to be understood by most is that the biggest bullies are the ones who turn out to be the biggest scaredy-cats, the ones with the most insecurities and fears. Bush refuses to admit errors - I believe he's still thinking of an answer to the question of what he might have done wrong during his first term. Setting a public goal - say, 125,000 trained Iraqi troops who can defend the key areas - would actually create expectations for, you know...them actually doing that.

The only thing more insane than this is that there is so little outrage about it. Democrat leaders like Pelosi and Reid have begged for this, but to no avail, and no one in the press seems to harp or even acknowledge this.

This is all why Bush won't entertain the idea of missing a scheduled nap and meeting with Cindy Sheehan. All she claims to want to know is why we're in Iraq, why her son was over there in the first place. In short, what is the U.S. goal in being there? If it was the WMD, that alone defines the war as a failure. We went in based on mistakes we weren't alone in making, but they were mistakes nonetheless. If it's freeing the people for democracy - freedom is on the march, by the way -- then we might have something to say about the fact that women's rights are now officially worse off than they were under the brutal reign of Saddam. (This does not mean Saddam was a good guy, but there's also no denying that his country was not a theocracy, electricity and water flowed freely in Baghdad and women had a lot more rights than they are about to have under the new Iraqi draft constitution.) If...if...

It's been over two years of us being at war with Iraq, and it's still a reasonable question for someone to ask the President why we went in there in the first place. That virtually defines insanity to me.