Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And pretending, rkzen, that you have no idea what victory is -- or that the "they" you so bitterly inveigh against, apparently on the grounds that they are Republicans and you are not (I can find no other motive for your particular grousing), have no idea either is so beyond belief as to venture into the ridiculous. Certainly I ridicule it.

Victory in the Iraqi theater: politically stable, prosperous, democratic Iraq, and I'm willing to be patient to get it. Develop Iraq towards the Barnettian Core, which is in no instance anywhere the work of a moment, but of a decade, minimum -- "the train engine can go no faster than the caboose." Defeat in the Iraqi theater is the loss of all the above. Continuing conflict in the Iraqi theater of war is the dispute over all the above.

It's the same for the Afghan theater of the war.