What bothers me most is that it's yet another case of the American military being put into a position where it is not allowed to leverage its true power, leading to an inconclusive withdrawal, and the message that sends to friend and foe alike. We send our enemies and rivals the worst possible message - that we're not committed to slugging it out and are a decadent, self-indulgent power that doesn't have a central ethos or set of shared beliefs we're willing to defend - and the bad thing is that's basically true.
We don't fight to win anymore. We substitute real objectives with these nebulous ideas about "liberating" people who have no desire to be liberated, or projecting some supposed will of "the international community". Whatever happened to just putting such a hurtin' on people they'll never even think about antagonizing you again?