Redefining the success of the 'surge'

From the Daily Telegraph, an honest look at how Bush defines "success" when it comes to the 'surge':

Mr Campbell, whose remarks may cause embarrassment to Downing Street and anger in Washington, said that the casualty figures for April - in which 1,500 civilians are believed to have been killed - provided no "encouraging" evidence.

Speaking on the record last week to a public audience at Chatham House, the London-based foreign-policy research institute, he said: "The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working, if reduction in casualties is a criterion. The figures in April were not encouraging."

In unusually candid comments, Mr Campbell also disclosed that American commanders had decided that the criteria for the "success" of the troop surge would be nothing more than a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's al-Qaeda bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, which destroyed its golden dome.

The destruction of the shrine, one of the most important Shia sites in the world, led to a dramatic escalation in sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia factions, peaking at 3,500 deaths in September last year. Casualty figures had been running at 800 a month before that, a level that few would regard as anything approaching peace.

While the United States military has made little secret of its view that the bloodshed in Iraq can now only be contained, rather than stamped out altogether, the suggestion that 800 murders a month in the country would be a measure of success is an indication of how far the coalition has been forced to reign in its expectations.

Just like "victory" in Iraq keeps getting redefined, the "success" of the 'surge' is likewise just a matter of which definition is used. No matter what Iraq looks like in September, there should be no doubt that the 'surge' will be a success, simply because Bush will tell his military commanders that success is defined by whatever the situation is at that point.
Due to the results of recent votes in Congress, it's now clear that the 'surge' will last for the remainder of Bush's term. This also is an example in semantics, by changing the definition of the word "surge" to that of the word "escalation". So, after more than three years of thumbs-up, smiley-face assessments, it will turn out that two more years of a roughly 30% troop increase was all we needed to get us back where we started. At that point, more thumbs-up, smiley-faced assessments will be in order and Republicans will be able to blame whoever takes over after Bush. Republicans will hail Bush as a great military leader for using the 'surge' to get the back to the point where it was before the 'surge'.

You know, it's not a question of victory or defeat here. It's not as if we are fighting a conventional war or a regular army. We are essentially fighting social unrest and political impotence with crude force. There is no "social unrest" commander with a headquarters that we can go to and surrender. But Republicans keep casting the situation in Iraq as if it were a conventional war, precisely because a conventional war can be lost, and an occupation cannot be lost. Bush knows that Americans don't like the idea of "defeat", so a small segement continues to grudgingly support his failed policies to avoid it. We all want to see Good prevail over Evil, so we tell ourselves that there are clearly defined Bad Guys and clearly defined Good Guys. However, the truth is that a lot of the Bad Guys wear the uniforms of the Good Guys, and Al-Qaeda doesn't wear uniforms at all. And when anyone starts talking about the truth in Iraq, you can be sure that a Republican will accuse them of treason. It's kind of like blaming the people who dial 911 for the crimes that are committed, because they are somehow admitting that crime exists and therefore 'emboldening' criminals. Sadly, we are now dealing with an Administration that uses wishful thinking and semantics as the primary tools of leadership.