I understand that some right wing idiot is going around again, propounding the idea that the US could have achieved "victory" in Vietnam if we had just stuck it out a little longer. (I also understand that this right wing idiot is actually Fred Barnes). Victory victory victory. If you're a certain kind of person, that word sounds sane, even sensible--on the football field. But as a description of something possible in Iraq, or in Vietnam, it does not sound sane. It does not even rise to the level of "deluded", and resides more in the category of cynical-disinformation- employed-to-plunder-the-American-people-of- their-hard-earned-cash (whatever they have left once their jobs have been outsourced and their health benefits cut off). Little George and Big Dick love the word "victory", and they use it all the time, but it makes no difference. "Victory" doesn't apply when you've never revealed what a "victory" is.
Let's look at victory in terms of the liberation of Paris. Allied troops marched into Paris, after the Axis troops retreated, and they were, indeed, greeted as liberators. Except the Germans had never been French--they were the invaders, and so in Baghdad, we're actually more analogous to the Germans--occupiers. Who will drive us out? The Sunni-linked Saudis or the Shiite-linked Iranians? It is taking a civil war to decide.
Or let's look at victory in terms of the surrender of the Japanese. Nuclear weapons. A hundred thousand or more deaths, the unleashing of a new form of terror and dread into the world. At the end of a long and expensive war, the Japanese looked reality in the face, saw that the Americans were capable of anything, and laid down their arms. Maybe this model applies to Iran, and, because of contiguity, their neighbors to the east and the west (you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows), and the north and the south. What do you say, Fred, want to achieve "victory" by nuking Iran into submission? By the way, Fred, the bunker busters don't work--they don't go deep enough, and the Pentagon knows it. So any nuclear attack would just be a show of force.
Oh, there it is. Show of force. Victory would be achieved if those pesky Middle Easterners just acknowledged that the US is biggest and best, and has a right to tell them what to do (yes, Israel, you can have nukes, no, Iran, you can't.) Now we are at victory as an existential thing--a way that I perceive myself, and that others perceive me. Oh, yeah, victory as status. Is that all George and Dick want? To be acknowledged as the go-to guys, the ones with sayso, the biggest dogs on the block? Seems like it, but I don't think so.
The problem with victory here is that Cheney and Bush can't reveal what they have always really wanted--control of Iraqi oil, and so they when they get it (which they might), they won't be able to reveal that victory is achieved. There's a big picture and a little picture. The big picture is that no victory can be won against an insurgency without pretty much wiping out the native population (which naturally resents being told what to do). The little picture is that if and when the US and its oil companies get control of Iraqi oil and the profits thereof, they can't admit that that is what they were after in the first place. So, "Prez" Bush, no victory for you. Sorry.