Tell Me How This Ends

South of Najaf, Iraq in 2003, General David Petraeus asked the question which would serve as an early epitaph for the entire American misadventure in Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.” Today, Americans are asking the same question about a very different enemy.

Every so often, an event occurs which, like the receding of the tide, exposes the detritus left behind. As we watch the world pass by, day by day through the windows of…