All the Strategery you will ever need.

This Iraq Survey group which meet with Bush yesterday, spent most of the day looking at other potential strategies in Iraq. To save everyone trouble, I've attached a definition.

Strategy (N) a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result (dictionary.com)

Since we're using talking military matters here we can use the term victory for our specific goal or result.

I thought that going into this we all had the same objective understanding of what constituted a victory in Iraq, which was the overthrow of Saddam and the creation of a relatively free, representative moderate government capable of defending itself and acting as an ally for the United States in the region. Now if you wanted to get scientific about it, we should probably define relatively free and moderate, as well as capable of defending itself in specific terms, but I don't think I need to, because I think most of us have a fairly good idea of what that would look like.

Talk of an exit strategy are nonsense. Perhaps the two worst things Colin Powell ever did was enunciate the idea that you don't go to war without an exit strategy. I respect Colin Powell, but that's totally bogus. Revolutionary War: Exit Strategy=Independence, Civil War: Exit Strategy=defeat of the Confederacy reestablishment of the Union and the end to slavery. World War I: Exit Strategy= victory over the central powers by military force World War II: Exit Strategy= Unconditional Surrender of the Axis Powers. In other words Exit Strategy= Win the War, than go home.

And on and on. We don't get into exit strategies until Korea,Vietnam, Somalia, etc. Korea we still haven't exited, and are still having to deal with, Vietnam was a loss, Somalia was a loss.

A strategy helps you towards your goal. An exit strategy is just a polite way of saying surrender, to a nation which, while pretty sissified at this point is not yet willing to tolerate talk of surrender. We can talk about exit strategies, we can talk about re-deployment, but those are lies your politicians are telling you, or perhaps you are telling yourself. We don't need a strategy to exit, pretty much any piece of white clothe will do the trick.
Now I can appreciate that there is a segment of the population which wasn't that onboard with the invasion of Iraq (well, they were for it, before they were against it,) but the situation is that we are there, and leaving there will be a victory for the Jihadists. We don't need to use high level intelligence to determine this (although the NIE said so) we can do this by listening to the Jihadis themselves. So while Democrats can harp and moan about how Iraq is not the central front on the war on terror, we know it is, BECAUSE THE ENEMY SAYS SO. We know leaving Iraq before they can defend themselves is a loss BECAUSE THE ENEMY TOLD US SO.

My apartment has ants. I know it has ants because I sprayed the counter top with an ant killer, and when I woke up the next morning there were literally dozens of dead ants on the counter top. No ants before I sprayed, ants after I sprayed. Does ant poison cause ants?

No, DK, don't be an ass.

Exactly. Taking steps to kill the ants didn't cause the problem, the fact that I'm a slob and left food hanging out caused the problem. Western civilization has been slovenly for decades, and left crumbs on which the Jihadis have fed. they fed in Somalia, they've fed in Bosnia, and Chechnya, they fed in Afghanistan, In Syria and Iran. (well those are pretty big anthills but even so) all the little crumbs of the earth we couldn't be bothered to pick up and tend to. Iraq isn't the problem, it's the solution if we have the courage to recognize it.