"Right now, I just look at this one and recognize that I am tired, not just as in lacking in energy, but also as in "sick and tired"."
Yes, it does wear you down. Which I suppose is the terrorist/insurgent strategy from the get-go, they know Americans are impatient and result-oriented and so if they can just keep at it for long enough, the US will 'give up'.
At one level, it's understandable that many American want to throw in the towel. On another, it is frightening. We tolerated 400,000 deaths to win WWII. Iraq is only 3,000 in the biggest battle of the global war on terror, a battle where this year we have killed a large number of Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq. Not just Zarqawi but quite a few others.
If we cannot toelrate this much lower level of casualties, have we gone 'soft'? Or is it a direct reaction to the political situation - democrats will demagogue anything while there is a Republican in the White House?
Either way, this is troubling, and it would be good to 'keep our heads about us' as we think the right way forward.
There are ways to win in Iraq... see here:
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/
"FWIW, I see the endless sectarian conflict everywhere, including in domestic politics, as futile. Eventually, someone will rise to the top of the rubble heap and just what will they have? Nothing but the shards of what they have destroyed."
Certainly, the violence is futile from our perspective, but we use reason and common sense. Their are darker and stranger belief systems held by the Jihadists and insurgents, a death cult almost...
I said in another thread that too many Arabs Muslims prefer Islamicist misery to pro-western joy. That is not just about Iraq, but also a good description of much of the self-defeating and masochistic anti-Americanism in the Arab world - Palestinians, Al Qaeda, Iranian Mullahs, Lebanon, etc.