Thursday, May 03, 2007

Defining Success in Iraq Is Now "An Acceptable Level Of Violence"

As the war in Iraq rages on, with seemingly no end in sight, the bar to measure success has been continuously lowered. Now being successful in Iraq according to President Bush is just less violence.
"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."
OK so let me get this straight, the President is saying that we will spend 1 trillion dollars to turn Baghdad into Iraq's Darfur region. I don't know about you but I want my money back.
The president then compared Iraq to the United States, saying that there were parts of the US with "a certain level of violence," but that "people feel comfortable about living their daily lives" in those areas. That level of violence, said Bush, is what the US is aiming to achieve in Iraq.
Does this mean that the car bombs need to stop entirely or is a car bomb or two a day acceptable? Does it matter that before the start of the war that Baghdad had no history of car bombs? I guess car bombs don't really matter anyway since dying as a result of them will leave you off of the casualty lists.

What is happening is a slow but deliberate erosion of expectations so that a victory can be claimed when no such victory was achieved. What this war has accomplished is the destruction of a country, 3000 dead soldiers, 25000 wounded soldiers and estimates of as many as 655,000 dead civilians. This is what George W. Bush calls success.

No comments: