On morality, realism and war

Ace of Spades puts some time and thought to write an excellent post on morality, reason, and war. His closing remarks:

Wars can be left half-finished, but the dead they leave behind are all-the-way dead. I'd like to avoid more half-finished wars and more all-the-way dead Americans.

And I think an important part of avoiding half-finished, lost wars is admitting that the years between 2003 and 2016 did in fact happen -- they weren't just a bad dream, I assure you -- and we have to heed the lessons that those years taught us.

Or that those years should have taught us, at least.