Leadership Quote by Thelma Drake

Win is doing a lot of ideological heavy lifting here. Thelma Drake's line - "There is only one option in Iraq: that we win" - is built like a door slammed shut: no exit ramps, no gradations, no allowance for ambiguity. As a piece of wartime political rhetoric, it doesn't argue a strategy so much as it polices the boundaries of acceptable thought. By framing victory as the only "option", Drake recasts contingency as character. If you question the mission, you're not debating policy; you're refusing the sole permissible moral stance.

The subtext is a familiar post-9/11 move: transform an open-ended conflict into a test of national will. "Win" is deliberately undefined, which is precisely why it works. An undefined victory can stretch to fit shifting goals - regime change, counterinsurgency, democratization, withdrawal "with honor" - while still sounding decisive. It also preemptively erases the messy middle where most real decisions live: costs, timelines, civilian casualties, regional blowback, and the possibility that outcomes in Iraq might not submit to American intention.

Context matters: politicians who backed the Iraq War often had to manage public fatigue without conceding error. This kind of absolutism functions as a loyalty oath to the enterprise, not just the troops. It's less a map than a mantra, designed to keep the political coalition intact by making the alternative to "winning" unthinkable - and, conveniently, unmentionable.