"Failure" in Iraq?!

I'm troubled how certain pundits and scholars are throwing the term "failure" around concerning the Iraq war.

First, this from Chomsky:

The US had enormous resources to reconstruct the ruins. Resistance had virtually no outside support, and in fact developed within largely in response to violence and brutality of the invaders. It took real talent to fail.link

The this from Michael Albert:

The occupation of Iraq has been an astonishing failure. It should have been one of the easiest in history. The more serious correspondents there are well aware of that.link

There's no doubt that we have not met expectations, even Rumsfeld concurs with this. But to say it's a "failure" is wholly premature.

SCENARIO: Six months from now, if Iraqi hotspots have subsided, and an actual democratic government has been elected (even conceding a certain confusion)... could we still call it a failure? How about one year from now? 2 years?

There seems to be some qualifying mantra that if success is not now (right now!), failure is the only alternative. It reminds me of Thomas Sowell's assessment of poverty in the Stanford, CA area. Yes, a good portion of people living in Stanford to live below the poverty rate, but in 2 years they'll be making 6 figures. Patience is a virtue.

As Cristopher Hitchens wrote in Slate last week: "It's now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or "quagmire" and that this conclusion shows in the fiber and detail of their writing. "