If the typical question for a war supporter is, "How much longer do we stick with an ineffective policy in Iraq?" the typical response is, "Until we achieve victory."

The next question, of course, is trying to get a definition of "victory." Fred Kaplan explains:

By the administration's own measures, then, victory in Iraq is not in sight, nor is there much evidence that the road we are treading will lead us toward that destiny. And yet our president still seems to have little comprehension of what the war that he has spawned is all about. [...]

In his speech at the State Department on Monday, where he restated his goal of achieving "victory," he also said of the fallen soldiers in Iraq that "one day people will look back at this moment in history and say, 'Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.' "

A wartime president who has no real allies and whose own military is too small to achieve such lofty goals should begin to scale back his rhetoric so that it has at least a patina of plausibility. By defining victory in Iraq as an outcome that lays "the foundations for peace for generations to come," George W. Bush ensures that defeat is nearly inevitable.

All the while, of course, John McCain insists that he will deliver more of the same.