I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, with no small amount of inspiration from Pong's comments. The USA military is basically this massive body of soldiers who've trained and trained and trained for a war that's never coming. In some ways I'm sure Iraq and Afghanistan may kind of seem to fill that role, but it's not going to leave anyone satisfied. (Even if we win.) Certainly there are shots being fired, and casualties on both sides, but this is not this is not going to be another new WWII or Korea, that veterans so proudly recount stories from. It's a war, but not the one they've trained so hard to fight in.
When this one is over, they'll need another, and another, and another, but the process will still never arrive at WWII situation, where everybody agrees that no expense need be spared, no sacrifice withheld, no politically motivated operational limits imposed. The day that war arrives, a true battle for survival against an overwhelming evil force, there will probably be mushroom clouds over every major city on Earth.
MADD that guarantees our survival, and it's mostly an automated process. What we use soldiers for is basically law enforcement, or bullying third world countries into doing things we think they should. (Not that we're necessarily wrong about what we want them to do.) I think our soldiers are going to have to get used to the idea that their role is to be nothing more than a police force. Either they have to accept that role, and do it effectively, or we have to be rid of them by cutting their funding until there's nothing left. Everyone keeps whining that there are too many political limitations imposed on how they fight. And..... that's pretty much how police work is.