The Americans have a way with words: a good loser is a Loser.

In other words, by contemplating the possibility of defeat yet remaining cheerful about it you psych yourself down – and help bring defeat about.

Which brings us to President Obama’s recent remarkable off-hand thought:

I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

Read this bracing analysis of why that is both inaccurate and open to misinterpretation.

A fuller version suggests that the President’s chain of thought is that in the nature of the terrorist/Taleban problem a formal full surrender of our opponents in the way that ended the fighting with Japan and Germany in WW2 on Allied terms might not be even theoretically possible; all we can hope is to force them deep on to the defensive to stop them attacking us significantly in the future. 

Fair enough. But wiser to call that outcome victory anyway?

And make clear that that’s what is going to happen?