Political Benchmarks

What, specifically, are the much referred to political benchmarks? Opponents of the war routinely say the war is lost because of lack of political progress. But I never hear specifics. They seem to imply that if such and such has not been done by some hallowed date it is a sure sign of defeat. They seem to be knowledgable about some international, intergalatical set of standards by which one can prove the situation hopeless. Is there some such thing written in stone and kept in a vault in Geneva? To me it seems laughable to imagine that a country could transform itself from brutal dictatorship to a vibrant democracy in five years, yet, this seems to be the standard seriously proposed by the critics of the war.