This list was kept small enough so that General Petraeus can easily keep a copy in his shirt pocket for easy reference.
- Keep as many key terms as possible undefined. Such as: War, Win, Progress, Mission, Purpose, Succeed, Success, Goal. This allows you, if pressed, to come up with all manner of excuses or evasions depending on what individual or group you happen to be addressing at the time. Or if you judge the person or group to be particularly dense, you just define one undefined term by using another undefined term. For example, "Why, our mission there is to win."
- Keep using those undefined terms because they have resonance; they have punch.
- Bury the Afghanistan War in the abstraction "War." And thus label those against the war "anti-war." That's like calling an abused spouse who takes her husband to court, "anti-man." It's "anti-THIS-man" and "anti-THIS war."
- Leave the strategy up to the Generals. Pretend that they're objective. The Generals are in this business because they enjoy war. They LOVE war. And they have an aversion to retreat, even when retreat is the best possible strategy. Retreat is for cowards. This idea can be expressed directly or implied in innumerable ways. They didn't choose this career to sit around playing euchre all day being happy we're at peace.
- Keep a Big Lie floating if it helps keep us in armed conflict. Such as, "if we don't fight them over there we'll have to fight them here."
- Keep paying for the war in infinite supplementals in order to "support the troops." Launch another Big Lie that if we stop paying for the troops they won't have any supplies. There is no question that we can safely start to plan to leave far before or even far after the refusal to pay for a war. If it turned out in the highly unlikely case that they can prove they will run out of necessary funds before they can complete safe evacuation, there is no question that emergency funds can then be set aside.
- If necessary, choose a date for drawdown, then as it approaches start emphasizing "depending on the situation on the ground." Then when the drawdown period starts, emphasize that "we can't do it yet because the situation won't allow it -- remember, we've always said that."
- To pacify those who want an end to the war, give a drawdown date. Then if absolutely necessary (e.g., say the above tricks don't work and you'll be thrown out of office if you don't) start actually drawing down. Say 2,000 a year. That might pacify a large number of those looking to end the war and at the same time will guarantee we'll be there for another fifty years if we want.
- As the pressure increases to wind down one war always keep a few others at the ready. Start early in adding other countries as "dangerous havens for al-Qaeda," such as Yemen. That's the "But Now They're Over Here" strategy of waging infinite war at least somewhere. And we can always come up with other villains, such as Iran and North Korea.
- Make a continuing crisis over it; keep terms such as "terrorist," "terrorism" and "danger to the U.S." in the public domain and media as much as possible.
- Pretend that any given "country" consists of one central government as well as accessible terrain (something like the US - except, of course, that those guys are really evil) as opposed to -- oh -- say vast mountainous areas peppered with untold thousands of caves in which an opposing army could easily hide from us and fight from forever.
- Pretend that that government and leader is motivated and ready and cooperating fully with us to turn the entire country into a peaceful one where everything is nice and people are happy once again.