us what success looks like. i think that s exactly right. unfortunately it seems that the president was posed with two bad options and one mediocre option. he was presented with the option of either losing pathetically by leaving, losing stupidly by putting in contractors instead of soldiers, or just kicking the can around. he made the only logical choice he could, which is kick the can around. but when you look at insurgencies and counterinsurgerien i counterin e counterinsurgery encys, it tends to end, if you re an intervening power, you re able to work together with the host nation, build capacity, and leave. had the president been presented with three good options, they would have looked like each of those different outcomes. and you can evaluate those on their merits. i hope that s the next step in what the national security