Ummm... no. The last 15 years have been anything but a full-scale war-to-the-knife strategy, ala WWII.<p>While the United States may not be willing to do that sort of thing, others may (cough...Putin, aka the honey badger of heads of state).<p>Also, such policies have a way of changing if the perceived threat level becomes high enough, as the former inhabitants of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden could attest.<p>I am not arguing (or interested in an argument about) whether those things were justified or not. I am merely pointing out that those things can and do happen.<p>Generalizing from Afghanistan is also not justifiable. Many have tried (and failed) to conquer and hold Afghanistan (in no small degree because there&#x27;s not really anything there worth owning). Syria, by contrast, has been successfully conquered, and held, many times.