I like to frame it a bit this way. War is the final step in diplomacy, rather than an absence of it.
What is different this time is that surrender will not be the measure, the simple fact that what a surrender would bring will already be present without it.
What will see it last is the fact that even though we are getting the things we want as you framed them, we will not be imposing them. They will chosen by their own free will.
This is what scares the terrorist entities the most. They fear that when people can choose by their own free will, they are less than likely to choose militant islam that keeps entire populations stuck in the 7th century.
I respectfully continue to disagree. The loyalist didn't get their way in our revolution nor did the fence sitters who hoped that we could, with a few battlefield victories, bargain our way back to equitable terms with England. We defeated England and excepted their surrender. The south during our civil war got less than they would have gotten than if they had not tried to seperate from the Union. We defeated the south utterly and excepted their surrender. Korea is still a thorn in our side because we fought them to the bargaining table and we lost in Vietnam because, though we didnt surrender(we are simply more powerful than Vietnam will ever be) we let them have everything their way because anything for us other than excepting defeat was unbearable. Again, nothing has changed. As for imposing what the US wants on Iraq versus the Iraqis chosing what we want, it really is a matter of what is doable. It looks like, at this point in time, the Iraqis are unable to free chose anything. Its to unstable and has too many belligerent players. It may take imposing civil order on the Iraqis for several decades before they stablize to the point where a democratic govt can stand on its own legs. Why this is unthinkable to even conservatives I do not know. The only reason we will have to be in Iraq for several decades is because we shy away from utterly defeating insurrectionists right now. We utterly defeated Japan and Germany and if then we proclaimed that they all had to wear clown wigs, they would have. If you think thats a stretch think about the fact that the USSR imposed communism on the other half of Europe and they took that up the butt. If we choose not to utterly defeat all enemies in Iraq AND choose not to be defeated in Iraq then we must except that we will be in it for the long haul.