You should post here more often, Buck.
I feel better already.
There is much truth in what you say. Unfortunately, politics, both
domestic and international, depends as much on short term impressions as on long term results. If things go bad for us in Syria in the short term, it will be progressive policies and personalities which will be blamed by the forces of reaction; and the reactionaries will be spared the need to suggest any policies or solutions themselves.
On the other hand, if history shows the Russians and Iranians repeating our mistakes and suffering the same setbacks we did, bogging them down forever in the quagmire of Middle Eastern religious fanaticism, no one will remember who it was that got us out just in time.