president obama faced in 2008, 2009, when the situation was moving in the wrong direction and we had to either escalate and search or accept that we were on a trajectory of losing. no, i really don't believe that there is some sort of minimal, warm making that you can do, and for a lot of the reasons that you are bringing up which is war is the fundamental choice of state craft. that something the u.s. military troops are taught that war is a different kind of act of state from other acts of states. when you start treating it at this little paintbrush that you can go around the world and dab into place to do the degree that you want, that is when you get into serious trouble. when the united states has done well, we had -- we were committed to fighting a war, and then in those cases in the modern context we've done