Afghanistan pivotal moment watch, John McCain edition

Another day, another make-or-break moment in an American foreign war...

As of July 5, 2010, securing Kandahar is the key to winning in Afghanistan:

"The Taliban know that Kandahar is the key to success or failure, so what happens in this operation will have a great effect on the outcome of this conflict," McCain said.

Despite rising casualties among allied forces, McCain expressed confidence that the NATO military operation would succeed.

"I'm convinced we can succeed and will succeed in Kandahar. It's obviously the key area and if we succeed there, we will succeed in the rest of this struggle," McCain said.

Here's a fun game: put in 'Afghanistan' or 'Iraq' along with 'pivotal,' 'crucial' or 'decisive' to google and see how many of times those wars were won or lost.

According to the Robert Gates, for example, Iraq was won about three years ago, since January of 2007 was the pivotal time.

General Stanley McChrystal, on the other hand, declared the Taliban was winning as of August 13, 2009, and gives us about 35 days to show clear results in Afghanistan. That was apparently both a "critical" AND "decisive" time.

And that's just a small sampling of the number of times our leaders have told us the war was about to be won or lost. Nor does there seem to be any end to the number of moments pundits and media outlets considered pivotal, crucial and decisive.

Maybe it's just me, but when our 'winning' a war equates with our ability to withdraw and leave behind a stable democracy, and after numerous make-or-break moments we are not able to do that, sort of sounds like those moments didn't go so well for us.

Well, thank God the Fourth Estate has both the memory and balls of a goldfish or else we'd be forced to listen to our leaders give us some answers. And I don't imagine that would be so good for our self esteem.

BONUS QUESTION: What does 'losing' mean if not a state of affairs where the most powerful military in the world is spending hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and several years, yet is unable to overcome a small, disorganized and impoverished enemy? Since it is an impossibility for the Taliban to actually drive out U.S. forces involuntarily or take formal control of the government, what, realistically, could be a worse outcome at this stage of the war then where we currently stand?