Recent announcements of attacks on ISIS paint a picture of a rogue group of militants finally on the run, getting their come-uppance as it were (being "brought to heel", since I'm not running for office?). Defeated in battle, having $800 million in cash destroyed, even having the US turn up the heat on their famed social media advocacy (helped by rock star hackers Anonymous).

After 7 years of maintaining and extending the Bush Doctrine to new countries, and tip-toeing around the Syrian conflict, has Obama finally found his groove, his not a "dumb war", but a smart war, one that has at least tangible benefits to what most people see as something worth fighting for?

Not only that, despite the ascribed increase in a ground presence, it's still a war we're largely phoning in -or airdropping in, successfully it seems. After a decade of pathetic training of locals, Petraeus' overyhyped and underrealized "we'll stand down as they stand up", we seem to be able more and more to rely on others to actually fight and get results.

But what I especially find interesting is how this will play in November (even though the non-political results are what I find most *important*). The backdrop to attacks on Hillary's foreign policy record is a series of ineffectual policing, a protesters-protection exercise turned into a failed state in Libya, and the rise of the thoroughly abhorrent ISIS in the newly proclaimed Caliphate, added to the misguided handover to Islamic State in Egypt. The capture/killing of bin Laden and the nuclear deal with Iran don't much counter that impression. Even though the actual damage outside the Mideast has been minimal, and wars globally have fallen fast, the net feeling has been a piss warm engagement across the whole region, pleasing no one, solving nothing, a steadily growing malaise worthy of Carter.

Until now. As Kennedy noted, success has many fathers (and mothers this year), while failure's an orphan. Trump rebranded and claimed he'd opposed the Iraq war from the start - a claim no one's found any proof of, despite the press starting to let him get away with repeating. Iraq's been wrapped around Hillary's neck so many times it's uncountable, while Benghazi's supposedly been her Waterloo by GOP standards (propaganda) and the post-revolution failed state is evidence of how we can bring chaos out of relative order - as if we needed more proof.

But expect if the defeat of ISIS progresses, suddenly Republicans will discover they've supported the war all along, that we've always been at war with East Asia, I mean Eurasia, and the visceral distaste of some Americans towards Mideast wars will turn out to be only a momentary caution, not a full predilection.

Because we define ourselves on our wars, as seen by most high school history curricula. We've got all that weaponry and shoot-em-up virtual headset games and "the few, the proud, the Marines" marketing, and of course the last good war, WWII, to look back to.

What happens if the war effort turns out to be successful, if genuinely nasty people are defeated, if a predominately air war approach with few boots on the ground proves effective? It will certainly disrupt the fall debate. Turning the desert into glass will look as unhinged and scared and pants-wetting as it sounds. The Iran deal and largely unventful containment in Ukraine and the defanging of ISIS will put the Administration (Hillary's current best buds) in the driver's seat and quite positive light. And our 15 year Mideast disaster will no longer appear quite as eternally doomed and ill-fated, but instead one more useful approach to the ugly sausage of foreign diplomacy and big stick politics.

I'm not especially thrilled, even as I oppose abandoning the field to terrorists and totalitarians and religious fundamentalists. I still greatly prefer planned, deliberate and sober (and rare) non-magical approaches to military intervention, and hope for a peaceful complete Arab Spring, perhaps naïvely leading to an EU-like MENA Union. And I still long for a return to foreign policy that's less about who to bomb and more whom to trade with (yes, those horrid wicked trade deals) and work closely with and open borders with - something strained by the recent street attacks in Paris & San Bernardino and the refugees fleeing war in Syria.

But I also see it as a possibly hugely ironic and net positive turn for the Democrats come November, sealing the deal, putting the current Republican dysfunctionality in even greater contrast with their Tea Partiers and Neocons - that we know how to split the middle without splitting the baby. It fast enough, it would also change the Democratic convention and the playing field with the left, and the nature of the hawkish reputation that the left's given Hillary - now contained in the newly-loaded term "neoliberal" - rather than the "tough on security" approach that at one point made Hillary's studied positioning on defense matters a unique way to be the adult in the room. There have been too many bungles along the way to try to repaint this as an uneventful foray, but War 2.0 is starting to look more grown up than once believed. 

Smart? Dumb? or plain Dumb Luck? well, it's America - we thrive behind Door #3. Let's hope it's a stupidity we don't have to keep repeating, that we can take our luck and close the door to this unfortunate chapter in .... something - I struggle to even put a name to it, it's so bewildering. It's hard to pick and choose, but if we're going to lead the way, we need to be better at picking Smart Wars and even Smarter Peace. Let's start now.