Agreed - there are fighting generals and political generals, and we have not enough of the former making decisions and recommendations, and way too many of the latter...all of which is the fault of the limp-richard pols.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - if 9/11 and 3,000 murder victims isn't enough, then all that will wake us up is a nuclear fire cracker lit off far upside our nether regions. Nothing else will apparently remove the PC-provided pink sunglasses, and get most of our public to tell the lefties to stuff it...and, as to paraphrase Churchill, it will all have been unnecessary, all a waste of precious human lives. Oh, and the irony is that most of the victims are likely to be big libs, as they concentrate in the most likely targets, population-dense cities.
The war should be fought to conquer the enemy and not the hearts and minds of the people. It didn't work in Nam and it work work in Iraq. My contention is that if the civilian populace provides logistics support to the insurgents/enemy then they have become the enemy.