Villanous Company has a good essay on the war. Excerpt:
The long war. It's a phrase one hears now and again, dropped by pundits and commentators as they try to make sense of the mare's nest that is Iraq.
We were all, or at least this could be said of most right leaning folks, behind the short war. It didn't require much in the way of resources; only what almost everyone could muster if asked. A few weeks of reflexive patriotic ardor, a chance to cheer on one's team as they went after the bad guys, no time to question, really, the means or even the goal.
And then reality set in. Suddenly the lines didn't seem so neatly drawn. There were no clear-cut metrics for measuring success - the finish line seemed nowhere in sight. And as the war stretched on and on and the insurgency began to grow and adapt, intermingling with and shielding itself behind the civilian populace of Iraq, rather than meeting their aggression with matching force the scrutiny of a watching world forced us to scale back our response. We were, in many cases, fighting with both hands tied behind our backs.
[snip]
In this war, it has proved all too easy for the enemy to exploit the weaknesses of western democracy - all too easy for him to turn us against each other. And all the foolishness of a soft, complacent society: political correctness, moral squeamishness, the inability to deal with conflict, have proved apt weapons to his hand. It's true. We are soft. And there are dark places in our own souls, into which we are afraid to go
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