Win, lose, maybe a draw

Scripps Howard: If you think of the Iraq war in terms of winning or losing, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid may well be right, if premature, in his judgment this week that the war is lost.
Some of this may be laying down a marker in the run-up to sending President Bush a war-funding bill, but he did indeed say, "I believe myself ... that this is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq." Reid said he also believed that the secretaries of state and defense shared that view.
There is still hope ... for a turnaround at a planned conference May 3-4 in Egypt of Iraq's neighbors, including two nations, Iran and Syria, critical to any settlement but that the Bush administration has heretofore refused to talk to.
Peculiar war
Iraq is a peculiar war. Militarily, the United States could "win" it in relatively short order by picking one side and crushing the other, but the cost and moral implications are unacceptable.
The Bush administration entered the war with several clear objectives. The United States, the United Nations and the Western European nations believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and few compunctions about using them. We certainly satisfied ourselves that there were no WMDs. We did succeed in driving Saddam from office and holding a free election.
And what of the president's other goal: A democratic Iraqi government that can "govern, sustain and defend itself and be an ally in the war on terror"? Hardly.
All is not lost, but you don't have to be Clausewitz to know it doesn't look good.