There is no such thing as winning an occupation. You either continue to occupy or withdraw. It’s semantic nonsense to apply the verb “win” to the noun “occupation.”

Winning in war or sport is not vague or ill-defined. When the clock runs out in football the team that’s ahead wins. When two runners are in a race the first to cross the finish line wins. When you fight a war, when you take the other guys’ capital and disband their government and army, that’s winning.

The words are correct, but they don’t mean what he thinks they mean. Just because you can’t “win” an occupation doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between withdrawing now or withdrawing later. There are plenty of differences. All other things being equal, for example, you’d rather withdraw now than later. I’m sure Dave would agree with that.

The problem, though, is that all other things aren’t equal. You can even talk about what those things might be without having to debate time-tables. For example, when deciding whether to stay or go, you’d want to know whether the current government is viable. Will it sink or will it swim? Does it matter to us one way or another?

You might be careful to consider who is going to fill any power-vacuums that might arise when the most potent military in the world heads back home. Not just on the national scale, but in that region of the world as well as the various provinces and cities within that country.

When people talk about “winning” in Iraq, they’re being lazy with their English, but the sentiment is not as bizarre as the words are. There are places along the time-line at which withdrawal would be disastrous. The debate isn’t how soon we want to come home — this isn’t vacation — the debate is about when would be the optimal time to withdraw.

Dave seems to be implying, as many on the left are wont to do, that we should get out right now, no questions asked. It’s a debate for another time and place, but one there’s one thing that’s indisputable: that you can’t “win” an occupation does not mean that one time to leave is as good as any other.