I agree with Ramesh and Jonah about both the gaffe and the damage, but an important, (albeit dry in this raucous convention week) policy point was revealed by the whole episode. The GOP needs to take the business of what we strategy wonks call “conflict termination” more seriously. It would be worthwhile for Bush repeatedly to define the metrics by which the public can measure success in the war – and they are, as Rudy articulated last night, long term ones.

In general, modern Republicans (and Democrats for that matter!) are good at getting into a scrap. They are even better at handling the military and strategy in the fight itself. But getting out and leaving something sustainable behind ain’t been a strong suit. Desert Storm is just a case in point of inconclusive endings to modern US military interventions. In 1991 I sat on one side of the Euphrates river watching Saddam beat the Shi’ite out of the Shi’ites who Bush Sr. had explicitly encouraged to rebel. And we were not allowed to help (although my brave lads broke policy by patching up the Shi’ite wounded at night and sending them back into the fight).

For all its many virtues, the Weinberger-Powell doctrine’s emphasis on an exit strategy ended up being more about us back home (political support, national will, etc) than metrics for conflict termination on the ground (territorial changes, measurable achievements in political transformation other than ephemereal and capricious “elections,” economic goals, etc).

The president should define the goals in the war on terrorism ad nauseum – it will lend strategic and moral clarity to the debate – in much the way that FDR’s Cassablanca conference declaration of unconditional surrender put a cap on what was then a murky WWII alliance strategy. In the meantime, Republican policy makers should grab a copy of Reagan defense official Fred Ikle’s “Every War Must End” and start figuring out how this applies to the war on terror and the way in which this should be put to the public.