Whenever I start thinking I'm smart...

...which is pretty often, I go read Victor Davis Hanson, and that makes me humble again*:

...we are left in the end with the verdict of the battlefield. The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw.

* I sure can't count on anybody around here to do that.