Successful COIN demands first and foremost that the population/populations where the revolutionary energy is the strongest, perceive themselves to have a viable political alternative to that which they feel compelled to revolve against - and trusted, certain, and legal ways to pursue that alternative that make sense in the context of their respective cultures.
The US always skips this step. We fixate on what we think is best for us, and then create or adopt some government who we believe most likely to act as we think is fit, wrap this fundamentally illegitimate entity in the nomenclature and trappings of "democracy" - and then task the military to build partner military capacity to protect this abomination from large elements of its own population. As this begins to fail of its own weight, we then apply more and more direct US energy (security, development, etc) in efforts to prop the whole thing up - but ultimately this has always failed.
When our overarching strategy was to prevail in a Cold War bi-polar contest, a tie in Korea and a loss in Vietnam could both contribute to a larger win. But that does not mean by any stretch that either of those conflicts were necessary, or even particularly helpful, in attaining that "win." They did not however cause a strategic "fail."
But what is the US larger end now?? What can a loss in Afghanistan and/or Iraq possibly contribute toward? What can they cause? They cannot contribute to a larger win because we have not defined a larger win. They can only contribute to a larger fail.
We have a grand strategy post-Cold War that is essentially to play not to lose. We are in a spread defense, we cannot score, and we see any who seek to score against us in anyway as a new "threat" to add to our ever expanding list. The surest way to lose is to play not to lose. The US needs a new grand strategic focus and a game defined in terms we can play to win if we hope to get off the current odyssey of bleeding off strategic altitude in exchange for tactical airspeed. As General Zinni commented to my war college class 9 years ago, "we don't know where we are going, but we are making good time."
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