What? No Military solution?

Victor Davis Hanson argues effectively to the contrary:

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. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we
face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and
then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or
ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front:
support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire
hysterical four years are about.

Let's use history as our guide: The Revolutionary War was decided at Yorktown; Civil War at Gettysburg; World War 2 at Guadalcanal, Stalingrad and El Alemain. And so on. Empires rise and fall from within, but the final decision is made on the battlefield.