How long should we as a nation continue to sacrifice blood and treasure for what is clearly a losing proposition?

My soldier son called last month to wish his mother and me a happy Thanksgiving. My iPhone buzzed and there he was, sitting in a gun tower, his smiling face bathed in gauzy infrared light, an M249 machine gun propped at the ready behind him. For security reasons, we didn't talk about his location. It could've been Afghanistan, Iraq or Kuwait. He's spent the better part of this year serving in all three.

His infantry company will soon be rotated back to the United States after a one-year deployment. Because he's an officer, he'll probably be among those on the last plane out. We're hoping it'll be by Christmas. My son would like to be home for the holidays, of course, but his biggest concern is getting back before the start of postseason play in the NFL. He's warned me, however, that the mysteries of Army upper management may mean we are both disappointed about the timing of his return. And so the clock ticks. Slowly.

During my son's tour of duty--his first overseas assignment--the number of U.S. dead in Afghanistan climbed past 2,000, while the total wounded surpassed 18,000. That's about 500 fewer Americans killed and nearly three times the number wounded during the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive in 1968. Certainly, Vietnam was a much different engagement than the one in Afghanistan, which has gone on for more than 11 years, but the casualty figures from both, in my estimation, raise the same question:

How long should we as a nation continue to sacrifice blood and treasure for what is clearly a losing proposition?  

[Continued at the Los Angeles Times]