To some extent wars like these are always messy in their ending. It took the US military, handicapped by the Bush Administration, a long time to recognize these situations for the insurgent conflicts that they always were. Adequate forces and a proper strategic approach could have led to an effective if "temporary" pacification of Afghanistan. The time and opportunity for that are nearly gone. Once again, we are "broke" and that reality will govern the outcome. Iraq will not be Iowa in the Middle East, but it will also not be Saddam's Iraq, nor will it be the takfiris' dream of Iraq. Perhaps that is victory enough.
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Among those who have bled in these wars, there will be cries of "stab in the back," and "nous sommes trahis." Get used to these kinds of outcomes, boys and girls. This is how the game is played.
About that the handicap imposed by the Bush administration - does this mean that our military leaders believed the propaganda perpetrated upon the American people, that our troops were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq? Or does it suggest that our military leaders figured out our troops were fighting an "insurgency" some time ago, but never had the integrity to tell the truth?
Also not quite sure what game is referred to in this statement - "This is how the game is played." The "game" of war? The game of "strutting the stuff" of our military might?
For my mind, Commander Jeff Huber's explanations make the most sense:
It sounds like [retired Marine General James L.] Jones buys into the mythos-based ethos that his buddy John McCain subscribes to, the one that says we know we can't win the war we're in militarily, but we can't afford to lose or the bad guys will make fun of us, which is the second worst fate possible.* We can't lose as long as we keep fighting, so we have to keep fighting even though we know we can't win. When people ask what we're trying to achieve by all this endless fighting, we tell them "success," and when they press us for what we mean by that, we talk out our hats until they leave us alone.
...*The worst fate possible is that everybody figures out we can't accomplish anything militarily anymore and slashes our budget to a stump.
