Matthew Yglesias on the, uh, middle of the end of the Iraq war:

[T]he policy of disengagement from Iraq over the past 18 months has been a stunning success. Not because it’s solved all of Iraq’s problems — it hasn’t — but because it’s solved one of America’s biggest problems since the war began, the continued pouring of resources into a mission that lacked clear rationale. At some point in 2004 or 2005, the adventure became essentially self-justifying. Troops needed to stay in Iraq long enough to salvage some kind of outcome that would somehow justify the decision to invade in the first place. But there’s simply no redeeming an irredeemable mission. The country, however, was trapped into a polarizing debate about “winning” or “losing” a war in which conservatives refused to admit “defeat.” But occupying a medium-sized politically divided country whose population is hostile to your presence is a game you only win by refusing to play.

You can also break this dynamic by defining success as successful extrication. If the U.S.’s maximal aims in War X are, as in Iraq, unachievable, you can secure the minimal ones by leaving in such a manner that the whole place doesn’t collapse into a hellhole. That compels residual missions (train-n-equip, political support, etc.) and ensures you don’t stay. The tactical goal becomes withdrawal, in other words, and the strategic goal becomes mitigation of the disaster. (The first is naturally easier to measure than the second.)

Notably, as much as everyone likes to talk about the “surge narrative” in Iraq, if you read through Tom Ricks’ The Gamble, there’s a split among General Petraeus’s advisers over whether the point of the surge is to facilitate the successful extrication of the U.S. from Iraq or to facilitate the continued pursuit of somewhat-less-than-maximal war aims. If it sometimes appears like “The Surge” can mean all things to all people depending on the immediate necessities of political argument, that might be attributed to the basic command divide.