Anthony Cordesman:

Let me begin by delivering two unpleasant messages. The first is that we are losing the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and we have at most two years in which to decisively reverse this situation. The second is that we are losing largely because of the failures of the previous Administration, the US Congress, and yes, to some extent this Committee – although I recognize that its Chairman deserves credit for being among the first to focus on these problems.

Our focus should be on winning the war, not finding new ways to lose it. A mid-war crisis is no time for interesting social and economic experiments.

Recently, from a Soviet general:

I can tell you which mistakes you made and which mistakes we made. They are the same mistakes.

From the web site of the book, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts:

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

—George Orwell (1946)