Remember Iraq?

We Won.

It's a strange war that ends this way; but as Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means.  We're moving from war to a very tense political environment.  That's more or less what we should expect.  What comes next?  Either compromise arises that allows tensions to ramp down, so that the political takes over from the war; or it goes the other way, and war blooms anew from the failure of politics.

Triumphalism would be wrong at this point. The fact is, nothing about this war went according to plan, and if we end up slumping towards defeat in Afghanistan and shrugging our way to a (hopefully) Cold War with Iran, then it might yet prove a Phyrric victory.

But all you folk who said that the war was unwinnable, that staying the course was infinitely stupid, that al-Qaeda was destined to triumph, that civil war was inescapable, that the whole thing was doomed, lock, stock and barrel; YOU WERE WRONG.

I'd just thought I'd point that out.