It's The, Ummm, Media's Fault
"To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks."
-Donald Rumsfeld, 12/5/05, at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, criticizing the media for its coverage of the war.
"To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief."
-George W. Bush, 11/30/05, explaining our "National Strategy For Victory In Iraq."
-Donald Rumsfeld, 12/5/05, at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, criticizing the media for its coverage of the war.
"To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief."
-George W. Bush, 11/30/05, explaining our "National Strategy For Victory In Iraq."
posted by The Cunning Realist at Tuesday, December 06, 2005
8 Comments:
I would absolutely love to see some measures of success defined (goal posts) and an anticipated schedule (though flexible, we can call it a time table) if they'd be so helpful.
In the mean time, I will continue to gauge our success on 1. insurgents captured 2. productive political discussions between factions (guns and knives do not count, Sadr!) 3. absence of U.S. military losses 4. absence of insurgent strikes...
How do you measure absence of US military losses? Do you mean a reduction in the death and injury rates? Also, I'm concerned an insurgency kill or capture rate might be misleading. We could be capturing more because we're creating more. If the capture rate increases by, for example, 20% it might seems like progress, but not if the base of insurgents is increasing by 50%. (The base number is, I imagine, unknowable.)
I think the Iraqi opinion of the US presence should be a metric. As should the Iraqi civilian death rate. (Down is good.) The Iraqi population is 1/13th that of the US. I have to think the frequent deaths of 30 or 40 civilians on a single day--the equivalent in the US would be 400 to 500 people--have to weigh heavily on Iraqi opinion of the US presence.
actually, the first "stategy for victory" speech did define victory, as follows (my paraphrase):
1. the baathists don't disrupt iraqi democracy;
2. iraqi forces can defend the country on their own;
3. iraq isn't used as a terrorist base for planning attacks elsewhere.
These are, of course, unreachable, but they are what bush calls "victory," and unless i'm losing my mind, both 1 and 3 speak directly to the level of terrorist activity in iraq.
not that one expects bush to direct a coordinated government at this point....
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