Marine General Pace: ``You have to define 'winning.'''

Depends on what is is

Via Harry Shearer's Le Show for November 12, I'm alerted to comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, included in this November 11 story, ``Pentagon to Reevaluate Strategy and Goals in Iraq'' in the Washington Post:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, initiated the review this fall after starkly deteriorating security in Baghdad led commanders there to rule out any significant cut this year in the level of U.S. troops in Iraq -- now at about 145,000 -- according to senior defense officials and sources.

Still, sources said that Pace's review marks a more fundamental and open-ended look for possible solutions in Iraq than the military has undertaken to date, growing out of a realization that Iraq could descend into chaos and that the current strategy is inadequate.

"The collapse of the strategy in Baghdad . . . caused a very deep introspection by the military," said a source connected to the Pentagon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Asked by one interviewer whether the United States is winning the war in Iraq, Pace replied: "You have to define 'winning.' I don't mean to be glib about that.

"Winning, to me, is simply having each of the nations that we're trying to help have a secure environment inside of which their government and people can function," he said, in remarks that seemed to depart from the administration's more ambitious stated goal of building a democracy in Iraq.

"You are not going to do away with terrorism," Pace continued. "But you can provide governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with enough security capacity to keep the acts below a level at which their governments can function," he said.

Pace's comments also could foreshadow a reassertion of influence by senior officers in the wake of this week's resignation by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to military officers and analysts. Moreover, some military officers have voiced concern in recent days that if they do not assert a greater role in formulating a future course in Iraq, that course will be defined for them by the resurgence of congressional Democrats, many of whom favor a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Yet another example of officials, both civilian and military, preparing for diminished notions of ``democracy'' in the definition of ``victory'' in Iraq. Pace also clearly undermines any argument for US troops to stay in Iraq in order to limit ``chaos''. With or without a specific timetable for withdrawal, opponents of the US in Iraq evidently are willing to wait and grind down the US military no matter how long it takes. Chaos is already there. Pace tells us that even if the US somehow decides it ``won'', the Iraqis will face a future of extreme violence for the foreseeable future.