"Successful commanders fight a sensitive war by being cognizant of what's happening on the battle field. They don't simply "stay the course" when it's obvious the course isn't working. "

like the infamous highway of death in the gulf war. Powell was concerned about how decimating the Iraqi army would play in the Arab world so he and Schwarzkopf talked Bush into calling the whole thing off. What they got was an emboldened Saddam who whacked 300k Shia and Kurds, an iraqi army that we would have to deal with another day and an Arab world that danced in the streets on 9-11. Turns out that had they stayed the course we would not be discussing Iraq today.