Glenn Greenwald points out the brick wall that is coming up fast:

If preserving our dominance of the Middle East is something we want to make a priority, then we would need to decide what sarifices we are willing to make to do so -- how we will massively expand our military, the increase in indiscriminate force we are willing to accept, and how we are going to pay for our imperial missions. Because as long as we are committed to dominating that region, we are going to be engaged in a long and likely endless series of wars against religious fanatics and various nationalistis who simply don't want us there and are willing to fight to the death -- making all sorts of sacrifices -- to prevent us from dominating their countries.

If we want to fight the wars necessary to maintain our dominance in the Middle East, then we should do so. And if we don't, then we shouldn't. But this middle course -- where we plod along aimlessly, starting wars that we're not really committed to winning and therefore are losing -- is not only the most incoherent course, but also the most destructive one.

What is indisputably clear is that our current course is totally unsustainable. That's just reality. It isn't that things have progressed too slowly in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's that the situation has deteriorated in both countries, to the point where Al Qaeda now has not one but two countries (not counting a nuclear-armed Pakistan) in which it is more or less free to operate. And the stronger they get, the more of our resources are needed to keep up. Yet we don't have the resources needed and aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get them. But we pretend that's not the case by insisting on our divine entitlement to magical victory and depicting those who claim otherwise as people who hate the troops and don't want to win.