I disagree, most strenuously.
First: None of our losses are pointless. It is easy to justify wholesale losses in old battles that were won. We lost more good men in one day at Iwo Jima, or Omaha beach, than we've lost in four years of the War on Terror. Were those islands or beacheads really "worth it"? Admittedly, we couldn't cope with that level of loss today, but it remains that every single one of them matters.
The "war on terror", much as you dislike the term, is one where we have never even lost a battle. In WW2, we spent the first couple of years getting our butts kicked. Not only did we not ~win~ any battles, but we got our collective @ss handed to us in fine form by the likes of Rommel's Africa Corps.
Imagine it today, if in the first couple of years into our war on Al Queda we'd have had twenty thousand troops killed and had won ~no~ battles.
Had CNN existed then, we'd be speaking German today. Since CNN exists now, our chances of our children speaking Arabic are, sadly, pretty good.
Your point has been that this is all the fault of Bush and his unwillingness to go far enough. I would submit that it is far more insidious than that. It is the combination of the willing anti-western fifth column of U.S. media, and the basic short attention span of the American Public that makes modern warfare impossible.
It wouldn't matter if we're talking about taking Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, or taking Atlanta or Seattle ~back~ from some invading force. Our media would be on the other side. That's just the way it is. No, it doesn't bode well for us.
The most "pointless" of losses are in battles lost. And no... we haven't seen the end of it yet. Our most grievous losses will come after we've turned and run from this battlefield. But they'll be losses not on some beach on some forlorn island, they'll be losses by the thousands on streets here at home.
Me? I'd rather beat them there. Like we're doing. This is no time to give up.