Defining Success (cont.)

Frederick Kagan has published an article on defining success in Iraq, a prominent issue during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings a couple weeks ago and an important area of disagreement among presidential candidates. Here is a reminder of what Senator McCain and Senator Obama said at the hearings:

In his opening remarks, Senator McCain proposed that success means an Iraq that is stable, prosperous, democratic, not threatening to its neighbors, contributes to defeating terrorism, and, most importantly, no longer needs American troops. He described these conditions as “within reach.”

Towards the end of the day, Senator Obama proposed that a hypothetical Iraq with some approximation of the “messy, sloppy status quo” conditions but only 30,000 U.S. troops might be an acceptable definition of success. Saying it was unlikely that Iraq would have no al Qaeda presence or Iranian influence in any manageable time frame, he warned that setting the bar too high meant the possibility of staying in Iraq another 20 or 30 years.

Now, here is Kagan, offering a statement consistent with what McCain proposed:

Virtually everyone who wants to win this war agrees: Success will have been achieved when Iraq is a stable, representative state that controls its own territory, is oriented toward the West, and is an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, whether Sunni or Shia. This has been said over and over.

The full essay is at once a warning of the dangers of leaving Iraq, a proposal for how to measure success, and a rebuttal to war critics.