DT, immediate victory is not the only acceptable outcome of our efforts in Afghanistan. We've been fighting the Mafia for almost 100 years. Have we won yet? No. Have we significantly injured its ability to operate? Yes. The same is true in Afghanistan. Now, Al Queda cannot use Afghanistan with impunity to plan and train for its operations against us and it has been forced to deploy some of its resources to defend itself against us. Thus, those resources cannot be used to plan and execute attacks on our soil.

And Goombah, we can't trash over 200 years of our trying to do the right thing and defending and propagating freedom and liberty by flattening an entire country. Unlike Japan and Germany, the peoples of Afghanistan hardly know what is going on in the village a few miles away let alone what is going on their country and they cannot in the least be construed as supporting something they know little or nothing about. The same was true in Vietnam. Those peole were just trying to get through each day. We need to be persistent. It will bear fruit.