We are five--maybe six-- years down the path of a decision that we should have turned away from.

The crazy thing about it is our failure in AFG will get mixed in with the surge, and the root cause of the poor decision-making won't be laid bare.

It was pretty clear when Bremer et al. screwed up Iraq, and although I know in my heart and my noggin how we got it wrong in the graveyard of empires, it will be very difficult to parse out the lessons for future conflicts.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, rates their fair share of the sh*t sandwhich, but as we draw towards 2014, it is going to be smeared all over the place.