It had relevance when you were fighting in wars against a legitimate government with the overwhelming fight coming from a uniformed army. Somehow I doubt we'll ever again face that.

I'm not sure there's ever a "win" in the classical sense against the kind of warfare we face now and in the future. Nobody can take us on head to head on a defined battlefield so they're all going to fight us with insurgencies where you'll never know friend from foe. There will be bands of localized fighting groups that might have a defined leader you can negotiate a peace with but when you have hundreds or thousands of unique groups as we've faced in recent wars, there's just no central authority to cry uncle.

You seem okay with staying in foreign countries for centuries as peacemakers but I have a huge problem with that. Have you ever been to Korea Tom? I have and it was a bizarre place. In among the modern society was this undercurrent of a military tension that was palpable. You'd be walking down the street shopping and a helicopter would fly by you low with machine-gunners at the ready. I'm pretty sure that having American forces armed to the teeth within your borders creates more problems than it solves. I've always been told by military leaders familiar with the area that we weren't there to prevent the North from invading but instead to keep the South from attacking North. Just maybe, had we let them sort it out on their own (while convincing the Russians and Chinese to stay out of the fray) it would be a united and peaceful country today.

Our presence in Germany was not a huge problem after WWII because culturally we fit. We looked like the population, worshiped like they did, drank and ate similarly, etc. However, leaving an occupying force in nations where we differ so much from their culture is a recipe for disaster in my mind. There is simply no way a western, horny, drunken bunch of go-USA good old boys fits into a Muslim way of life. You can quote all the statistics you want about the quality of our fighting men and women but no data will give you a taste of their ambassadorship abilities in foreign lands. It's not a pretty sight. I was often embarrassed in the areas we visited at the cultural insensitivity.

I think the option is to lay down deadlines, disarm the population as best you can, look for international involvement where you can find it, and just get out with stern warnings that you'll exact a murderous return on any leaders if there's any retaliation within our borders.

Art