Opinion (Dianne West): What would 'victory' look like?

Sure, let's go ahead and say this new "troop surge" being bandied about Washington comes off, and tens of thousands of additional American troops pacify enough of Iraq to pull off what President Bush this week called the Iraqi dream -- "a stable government that can defend, govern and sustain itself."

OK. So then what? It's not hard to imagine that the United States would take the first opportunity to wish that dream-come-true government well in defending, governing and sustaining itself, and then high-tail it back home. But that's no strategy. That's an escape hatch. What happens after that? Looking back on, lo, our many costly years of liberation and occupation in Iraq, what would it turn out that we had actually won? In other words, what, in this best-case scenario, is "victory" supposed to look like?

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