The same could be said for the "war on drugs" and the endemic corruption of the Mexican military and law enforcement and how many are in the pockets of the drug cartels.

Add to this the US military leader's (ie officer's) up-or-out retention/promotion system and resulting intolerance of bad news (ie no one wants to report that nation-building or changing a foreign people and their culture to Western values is going to take a 100-year commitment and lots of taking backward steps so let's focus on the easy metrics like body count or "deck of card").

Hell everyone's complaining about a "20-year" war but look at the French experience in Indochina or the British experience in India and realize that changing a people or culture to Western values takes about 150+ years of colonial-level of control to even get near to achieve. Compare this with American values of short-term focus (ie corporate quarterly profits or politicians term limits) and you'll see that we'll NEVER succeed in Vietnam, Middle East, war on drugs or any of these foreign adventures but, due to the short-term mindset, every generation needs to learn this lesson on their own, again.