As of today, the elapsed time since 9/11 is eight months longer than the time between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day.
Combine that with the PC-hobbled "homeland security" department and the administration's unwillingness to candidly name the enemy's ideology.
I think it's way too early to use an adjective like "successful"
Yep. And it took an atom bomb to do it. I'm glad they did, but if they had not, it would have been at least 2 more years of bloody fighting. And we also occupied Japan with many troops for many years after. Afghanistan (where all empires fail...remember) fell in weeks. Baghdad fell in weeks. Now we are in the occupancy stages of both countries and will be for a couple more years. Looks damn successful to me.
"As of today, the elapsed time since 9/11 is eight months longer than the time between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day"
Well, I think you will find that were fighting Japanese holdouts for about 5 years in Japan.
In Germany, the insurgents were active for three years.
In Russia, the russian Civil War ended in 1921 and the last white Russians were killed in action in 1953.
Our experience in Iraq is not at all unusual.