Eerie Alternate Universe

As I listen to news reports about the "final push" today into Fallujah, I can't help but think, "Jesus Christ, does anyone remember how many 'final push' efforts we heard about between, say, 1964 and 1975?" As I read credible estimates that we've killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 people in Iraq, I feel like I'm in some eerie alternate universe where indeed we have not learned from the past and we are condemned to repeat it.

Civilians who are indistinguishable combatants.

A disastrously miscalculated campaign to win 'hearts and minds.'

American politicians sending troops overseas to fight and die for a war we started under false pretexts.

Will we be in Iraq for 11 or 12 years? Longer? England was in Iraq for almost four decades after WWII...