Winning involves succeeding in doing what you set out to do, get where you wanted to get to.

Sometimes it turns out that this is just not possible. In those circumstances you adjust your plans, and settle for achieving something easier to achieve, or getting to somewhere easier to reach. But that isn't "winning", at best it is reducing the cost of defeat. Damage limitation.

"Winning" in Iraq would have meant cheering crowds welcoming the liberators, and a new society that would be democratic and also be friendly towards America.

The first part wasn't achieved; the second part is pretty evidently not going to be achieved. Whatever happens will, at best, be damage limitation. When politicians or their spin doctors call it "victory" that is just is a hollow joke. It doesn't even fool the people who say the words, let alone the overwhelming majority of people who listen to them.