Winning, or Another Name for Not Dying

When I'm not being bombarded by pros and cons about the escalation of troops, oops, I mean SURGE, in Iraq, I'm being inundated with discourses on whether we're winning in that country.

Hmmm.

My first question would be: how does one 'win' an occupation?

My second would be: since when is 'winning' the measure of an advanced society?

As an Air Force intelligence officer, my job was not to 'win' the exercises in which I took part, but to 'accomplish the mission'. If I had a Euro dollar for every time I heard those three all-important words, I'd be manning my own site instead of blogspot blogging.

Now that I think of it, the Air Force tends to love and employ those trios of words often...'attention to detail'...'chain of command'...ACCOMPLISH THE MISSION...(remember that little banner thing on the carrier....)

Unless the military has changed beyond all recognition, there's not a soldier, airman or marine who has been sent to Iraq 'to win' but rather to accomplish the mission.

And yet, today I heard someone claiming the morale is so much higher in Iraq because the troops there feel they're 'winning'.

Perhaps, to play devil's advocate with myself, they are referring to winning against the terrorists, 'Winning the War on Terror'.

So my next question would be: how does one 'win' a technique or method?

And my next question would be: why did we accept such a humvee load of tripe as a 'war' on an amorphous definition of violence practiced by anyone, anywhere, anytime?

You know what? IF the morale is higher it's probably because there's been 'a slight downtick in violence' of late, and more of the troops are LIVING.

So my last question would be: when are we all going to get good and fed up with being fed this kind of crap?