Fred Kaplan writing in Slate.com
But any realistic hopes hinge on understanding something crucial about the surge in Iraq—it has not yet “succeeded,” in any meaningful sense of the word.
Petraeus understands this. At his farewell ceremony as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, he said, “I don’t like to use words like victory or defeat,” and this remark did not stem from modesty. As anyone who’s read Clausewitz knows, war is fought for political aims—it is not won until those aims are achieved—and this war’s aims are not yet within sight: a stable, self-sustaining, democratic Iraq whose government is an ally in the war on terror.