I do wonder if we (US & UK) look too much at what we have done and not what our opponents have done.
David, I tend to think that is a given. Our assessments over the 15 past years for our operations in the Middle East generally indicate we're winning, and every year is the pivotal year that will result in an enduring victory. Of course that has proven to be complete nonsense, and now it is laughable when you hear it. Some assessments are dishonest, but in most cases they're simply focused on what we have done, and if you look at through that lens we're generally making progress. On the other hand, if you conduct a net assessment and compare our gains relative to our adversary's it paints a very different picture. It also paints a different picture if you assess strategic gains versus fleeting operational level gains, all too often disconnected from strategy, because either there is no strategy, or military campaigning no longer effectively achieves strategic ends for various reasons. One can argue, and you may be making this point, that our 15 plus years of tactical and operational success have resulted in a global strategic for us relative our more important strategic competitors, Russia and China. They have invested in developing advanced war fighting capability and made significant progress using so-called gray zone strategies while we're undermining our military readiness and ignoring what is really important because we're mired down in the Middle East. Only now we're beginning to see this, and even if our national leadership understands this we have a military culture that seems dependent upon continued rotations into the Middle East because that defines who we are.