Sure Canoneer but exactly how do we define victory in this case. Unless I am mistaken our goals were to prosecute Al Queda and to deny them training camps in Afghanistan. To some extent we succeeded in this in both theaters of war. If we had killed Osama Bin Laden it would be fair to say that we did what we set out to do but this war metastasized into something we are unable to effectively counter, a war within another sovereign country’s border. We didn’t set out to invade Pakistan but that is what we are facing. So we are no longer flushing a running enemy out of its cover in a vast wilderness but in the difficult situation of having to ally with or go to war against a nuclear-armed state of a hundred million or more. It stinks but the problem is intractable to those not willing to cleave the Gordian knot. To solve this problem would take more commitment than we had going into Iraq and if our leaders were up to it, which I think they clearly are not, then I am pretty sure the American people are not up to it. Not when they feel we have lost the initiative to survive an ever growing, insatiably power hungry, freedom diminishing, money-grubbing nanny state. Foreign adventures are a luxury. We are losing the battle for the United States and badly.