It's been...

slow. Phenomenally slow. Like...glacially slow.

If I'm ever in charge of a war, I'm deploying units, and none of them are coming home until we've either won or lost entirely. There will be no "rotations," there will be no "relief in place," and there will be no "transition."

Nobody will take servers full of information and just leave, and nobody will look at me and explain that they need to visit every cluster of huts within 25 klicks to "learn the AO."

No city leader will have to listen to another junior - the tenth in five years - officer explain that his unit is there to "help the people of Iraq learn to leverage their government structures." No farmer will have to explain to an earnest Soldier with a clipboard that he has six hours of electricity on the average day, ten on a good day, and none at all on occasion.

[Sigh]

Grumpiness like this is probably why I'm not allowed to be in charge of wars. Well, that and the part about being a staff sergeant in the Reserves.