Cannoneer,

“Getting the hell out because you have given up is defeat. You can own that. I won’t”

So you would have advised General Grant to continue to assault again and again at Cold Harbor?

Indignantly falling on your sword doesn’t change the fact that if we left A-stan tomorrow not a helluva lot would change. At some point we’re going to have to face the Sovs and the Chinese and we can’t piss away our forces and war impliments on A-stan.

I would be more encouraged if it could be cited that someone, anyone, had ever succeeded in A-stan, but the sad fact is no one has ever done so.

I would be overjoyed if we nuked them , but we won’t. So given those two positions I can’t see asking good men and women to continue to die for a shit ass country with no value to the USA except to satisfy some peoples false sense of what constitutes courage. It is not courageous to pursue a losing position for no substantial reason. A-stan does not represent a national threat to the USA. Your advocacy of continuing to feed the enemy fresh bodies is not courage, any fool can give that order. You can own that 18th century strategy. The new NIE will be out after the election and the early word on A-stan is that it is an untenable position for us to remain there.

Even Douglas MacArthur pointed out that a protracted land war in Asia was always a loser for the USA.