I've always said this war has nothing to do with Sadaam, nothing to do with freeing Iraq people, nothing to do with conventional winning of a conventional war.
It's always been about:
1. Create a battlespace of our choosing far from NYC and San Diego.
2. Make it a geography so valuable that the thousands of terrorists (rats) in hiding world wide will want to come out of hiding to fight there and die, there. Not sneak out in NYC and Chicago to wage war here. (Cheeze in the trap)
As soon as we pull out of the region, where do you think the remaining and newly recruited terrorists are going to go to wage their war?
The war must stay the course for at least a generation. Or until the taste of freedom and peace takes hold like it did in the Soviet block to win the cold war.
You're absolutely right.
We've lost sight of this.