There was a very insightful, if troubling in its implications, op-ed in The Washington Post on Monday. With all the tumult of recent days, I fear it may have gotten lost in the shuffle.

The point of the article, though this is a great simplification, is that 'victory' in military contests seldom rests on objective or even clearly measureable standards. It depends mainly on having your adversaries agree that they are in fact defeated.

Perhaps another way to say it is that it depends on engineering military victories of such a totality and such a nature that your adversaries will accept defeat. Read the piece. It's quite perceptive. It raises an issue similar to one I discussed in this column in The Hill ("Shock and awe — nothing more — for Bush in Iraq") last March.