This topic has been brought up before, although it hasn't really been given the emphasis or attention it really deserves. But to be fair, the problem did not originate with this administration. As Mr Rumsfeld pointed out, "you go to war with the army you have", a situation almost every Commander-in-Chief throughout history has faced. You rarely have the army you'll need when a conflict starts, in fact, you rarely have the army you think you'll need.

There's plenty of blame to go around for this, and a lot of it is just bad luck, wars tend to turn out differently than we expect them to, and no nation can afford to cover all eventualities and potential problems. A lot of the shortcomings of our armed forces in this conflict could not have been anticipated, or were controversial even if they were. We should resist the temptation to be the Monday morning quarterback.

The light, quick reaction force envisioned by Mr Rumsfeld and his predecessors was not an unreasonable defense policy after the Cold War ended, and we should not forget that it was a policy endorsed by most liberals as well as many conservatives. It just made sense, both from a geopolitical point of view as well as from the viewpoint of domestic policy.

What we should learn from this episode is not that we were unprepared, politically or militarily, but that as the situation changed we refused to acknowledge those changes and make adjustments in either strategy or tactics. Decisions, or refusals to make decisions, were instead dictated by a desire to justify prior mistakes and to draw attention away from obvious failures in policy. They were then legitimized by association to abstract emotional values such as determination, steadfastness and courage: the Triumph of the Will. And worst of all, discussion and debate on how to conduct the conflict with Jihadism (which I believe to be both real and justified) was reframed into a partisan debate on whether there was a conflict or not, and the motives of those who debated the issue.

I know I harp a lot on this topic, but the events of the last few years have frustrated and infuriated me. We are losing a war we have to win, one we could have won, and I fear for the long term erosion of American power and influence in the world. No, I don't believe we will be defeated by Al-Quaeda, we may yet even destroy them on terms we define. What I fear is that the long term consequences of how this war was conducted will be to set in motion events that will lead to the beginning of a long period of American decline. The end will not come from military defeat, it will be from the financial and political and diplomatic consequences of this conflict.