He’s on the money. In the cases of Vietnam and China, we were not determined–in Washington–to win. Truman would not let MacArthur take the fight to China; bureaucrats micromanaged Vietnam to the point where they negated every accomplishment of our troops.

Perhaps some of that was due to the high price we paid during World War II, which–while not as bad as other Allied and Axis countries–was still very steep. Perhaps some of that was due to the fact that we had high government officials who were not convinced of the evils of Communism.

Say what you want about Iraq, but at least Bush was willing to see it through, and we now have something we can call a victory.

Obama, on the other hand, is on the verge of doing for the Pakistanis and Afghanis, what we did for the Vietnamese, Chinese, and North Koreans: quit short of victory, leaving the situation worse than before or–in the case of the Korean War–a perpetual stalemate and a humanitarian disaster of the grandest scale.

On one hand, we need to revisit the basis by which we allow our leaders to take our nation to war, and when we do this, what is our standard for “victory”. These nation-building exercises are draining our resolve.

On the other, once we are at war, we need to be willing to fight to achieve what we can reasonably call a victory.