Finally we can agree on something:
I won’t say deadzone is particularly smart, either.

I’m still curious about this ‘utter failure’ talk. When did it become obvious, even to someone of your admittedly limited intelligence, that the war was lost? What made you believe that? It can’t be because of casualty levels, which are historically low for a war. It can’t be because of mistakes, because there are mistakes in every war. It can’t be because we’re still fighting, because we’ve won war that we fought longer. It can’t be for lack of coalition support, because we’ve won wars fought completely unilaterally.

But you have no doubts in your mind. Having decided on the end state you want to see, you have no interest in competing theories or contrary data. You act exactly like your own caricature of the administration.