Victory Means Exit Strategy
Although I enjoy Daily Kos, I don’t read it regularly. There’s too much rant between the punches that strike home—which is perfectly acceptable in a partisan political blog, just not something I want to have to wade through for the good stuff. Instead I rely on political newsgroups to call the juicier bits to my attention. Kos has an exquisite bullshit detector, and he does his homework, digging through an awful lot of political blather to hold politicians and pundits to their words, so when he scores, he scores big.
My political newsgroup let me down in this case. I discovered this list of quotes instead as part of a Google search for something entirely different, but it’s rewarding to see a blind alley pay off. This page is loaded with what Kos does best: examining the words of our officials, elective or appointive, and exposing the hypocrisies. I won’t waste bandwidth by repeating them all here, but I feel this one deserves special attention, to be repeated as many times as humanly possible:
“"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
Indeed. Fire-eaters may insist on no exit without victory, but it works the other direction, too. Without establishing conditions upon which an exit strategy is to be executed, there is no way to determine when victory has been achieved. And as long as you remain, you're still fighting; as long as you're still fighting, you haven't won. No exit, no victory.
Our country was about to launch a military campaign against a brutal dictator, one known certainly to have driven a genocidal program against his own people, and suspected of trafficking in drugs and weapons-grade nuclear material. The “war” was not officially a war, since Congress had not formally declared one, nor even been consulted by our headstrong president. Naturally, this raised concerns in the opposition, who spoke with one voice against military adventurism. This particular quote came from a young governor, worried that an ill-conceived decision to embroil our military in sectarian conflicts half a world away would hurt our military, not to mention the troops themselves, and that the president was overreaching his constitutional authority.
The conflict was in Kosovo. The speaker was then-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX). If only he'd listened to his own advice before going to Iraq.