Allah wants to know how Obama defines victory. However he might define it, he’s not going to get it by keeping “a strike force” somewhere “in the region.” How is a strike force not an occupation? And if it is an occupation, how could he justify keeping it somewhere else, any more than he can in Iraq? But that’s beside the point that Obama and others of his ilk will always refuse to define victory, because the word presupposes a cause of action, one that might even be justified and whose success might be desirable. And that would wreck the whole foundation of their platform. Listen in vain–Obama will never say what would have defined success in Iraq because that presupposes a justification to be there, even while he proposes keeping an undefined body of troops in an undefined location to perform semi-defined tasks to a level of undefined success–because to define that success would imply that the other side has a perfectly good operating definition of their own.

Update: See?

McCain has not specified the number of troops he will keep in Iraq or the length of time they will be kept there. Obama has willfully distorted this position and implied that McCain wants to keep U.S. forces enmeshed in a century long war in Iraq. Fine. Distorting the other guys position is part of the game–or at least that’s how the “old politics” worked. But Obama can’t have it both ways. His Iraq plan also involves keeping an unspecified number of troops in Iraq for an unspecified length of time. The difference? McCain’s objective is victory. Obama’s objective, like the details of his strike force, remains unspecified.