I feel the same way about the lottery. Every week I drop my dollar into the system, and every week I don't win the jackpot, and every week I look more like a fool and a hopeless, innumerate loser.
After way too many years of this ineffectiveness, I now realize that the only way to come out looking like a winner would be to actually win the sucker once and for all. My PhD think-tank friends tell me that buying $2000 worth of tickets a day instead of $1 a week would increase my chances of winning several times over--so that's what I've decided to do--because I can no longer afford to fail and look like a fool in front of my friends.
Make no mistake: There can be no compromise in Fallujah. If we stop one inch short of knocking down the last door in the last house in the city, our enemies will be able to present the Battle of Fallujah to their sympathizers as a great victory: They fought the Americans to a stalemate (with the implication that, next time, the Americans will be defeated and driven from the Middle East).

Of course, we could defeat them. We know that. But in the broken world between the Bosporus and the Indus, seductive lies trump hard facts. Our insipid diplomacy plays into the hands of our enemies: It looks like cowardice. And it is.

We must not only win, we must be seen to win, graphically and decisively.