Rithmomachia

Regarding the Difficulty of "Winning" Counter-Insurgency Conflicts

The problem is the definition of "winning" in a COIN conflict; it's often neither conclusive, quick, nor politically appealing.

Vietnam was indeed a military victory, but was politically a complete rout - validating Clausewitz and thus invalidating everything the military actually accomplished.

The War Powers Act has historically been seen as a check on the power of the Executive, this is completely turned around in the modern era.  Since about 1947, there has been a tacit (if not explicit) collusion between the Congressional and Executive branches of government: the Congress will let the President deploy troops pretty much however he wants to with only a little public bleating, in exchange for his not demanding the War Powers Act.  They both win - he gets flexibility in policy, they don't ever have to take a public position on what he's doing.

I find this deeply broken, and leading not only to bad public and geopolitical policy, but bad for our soldiers.

Yes, FORCING Congress to pass a War Powers resolution before a CiC can deploy troops abroad would act as a check on the power of the President.  But it would also require consensus, and this means that the People would have to largely be behind it (for the cowards in Congress to crawl out from under their rocks and actually support it in the record).  FORCING such public and shared culpability means that if stuff goes sideways, we ALL have to recognize our parts in the choices being made.

To the original point, I submit that the "Lesson not learned" from Vietnam was clear; while our military has gotten even more crazy-proficient at what they do, and the force differential made the military victory even more foreordained, the failure was identical in 2003-2011 as it had been in  1961-1975: if you cannot sum up the goal of the conflict in two or three sentences (or ideally, one), you are going to be stuck there for a long time.

Part of a War Powers act MUST, therefore, include "Why are we fighting?" and "What conditions must be met to bring home our troops?"  Not 'most' of our troops.  Not 'pretty much all' of our troops.  ALL of them.  If the goal of 2003 had been "topple the Iraqi government" - pretty much everyone would have been fine with that.  In that case, our forces would have returned in 2004.  If it had been - as it turned out to be - "Topple the Iraqi government and rebuild it as a modern Liberal Democracy and then leave some bases in place to try to secure the security situation in the heart of the mideast with American forces for the indefinite future"....well, I think the public response would have been immediate, colorful, and probably used some very old Anglo-Saxon words.

To the OP: COIN conflicts are inevitable, with any non-peer opponent today.  Dealing with them REQUIRES competent politicians as much as generals, both at the front end and the back end.   Unfortunately as skilled as our troops are, our political leaders of both parties are far more capably incompetent.

Edit (addendum)

Yes, I'm aware that getting a War Powers act would be harder.  That is, I think, healthier.  It should be hard for a country to go to war.  REALLY hard.

Further, as much then as we'd share the blame if things go wrong as a result of issuing such, we ALSO would have to face the consequences of NOT doing anything which is often much worse.

Yes, this requires an actual 'adult' conversation about the situation (as complex as it may be) and the ramifications of doing something vs. doing nothing, and getting some sort of consensus out of a public more enamored with this weeks American Idol voting than issues of substance.  So be it.