Actually let clarify something, we can only lose in Iraq if we leave with the job undone. We might not win while we are there, but we can’t lose. So to say we are losing is inaccurate and unfair. It might be better to say: why we are not winning in Iraq.

So what is the answer, why aren’t we winning? I’ll allow President Bush himself to explain:

“The frustration is that the definition of success has now gotten to be, how many innocent people are dying?” the president said. “And if there’s a lot dying, it means the enemy is winning.” He paused. “That doesn’t mean they’re winning.”

But what does it mean? NRO and CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked, “How can you measure winning? The last couple of years, there just don’t seem to be any signals or signs that we’re winning.”

“This is the significant disadvantage we have in this war because the enemy gets to define victory by killing people,” Bush answered. In World War II, Bush said, progress, while hard to gain, was easier to describe. One could point to ships sunk, and battles won. “We don’t get to say that — a thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was,” Bush said. “It’s happening. You just don’t know it.”

Ah! The President has finally said what a great many people (myself included) have suspected for a long time permeates the official thinking regarding this war. The President and by extension the rest of the administration is defining victory in Iraq as the following:

The latest plan to retake the offensive on defining victory is the so-called benchmark. “The idea is to develop with the Iraqi government a series of benchmarks — oil, federalism, constitutional reform, there’s like 20 different things — and have that developed in a way that they’re comfortable with and we’re comfortable with,” Bush said. Progress toward those goals would give the administration new ways to point toward overall progress in Iraq.

Benchmarks Mr. President, that measure oil output, federalism and the rest are not tools to judge the success of a war. Wars are won and lost on a single very simple benchmark: the amount of the enemy’s blood you have spilled.

When we have killed enough of the enemy then we will have won. This entire war is being fought for oil output, federalism, reconstruction, democracy, Iraqi independence, and constitutional reform. Those aren’t the aims of war, not a war you intend to win anyway. Remember what General Patton once said, “No soldier ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country!”

The aim of war is to slaughter the enemy, brutally and in large numbers. Until President Bush understands that simple, ancient concept we will never win in Iraq. We might not lose, but we will never win.

A huge hat-tip to NRO and Byron York for this great article.