"Victory"

Joe Klein notes that Max Boot acknowledges some U.S. forces appear "a bit worn down and pessimistic" in conversations regarding Afghanistan. Klein sighs:

[Boot] thinks morale would improve markedly if the President uses the word "victory" in his Afghanistan rollout next week. But "victory" is a word that was never used by David Petraeus in Iraq--it was only used by unsophisticated bully-raggers like John McCain--and it is a word that would be laughable if applied to Afghanistan (just as it remains fairly implausible when applied to Iraq). Success is a better word than "victory," less bellicose, more in keeping with the spirit of counter-insurgency doctrine.