Interesting thoughts. I have a few thoughts in reply. Ill try to be careful not to expand the scope of our discussion too broadly.

I'm inclined to disagree that Americans are aware of the awfulness of war. War is imagined as safe and hygienic, fought with GPS smart bombs and laser guided munitions. I think that going into Afghanistan/Iraq post-911, most Americans anticipated fewer than 500 American casualties. Gulf War I had about 35 US casualties, as I recall.

We are now in a war that has created thousands of US military casualties and many more limbs lost. Soldiers on the ground deal with hidden IEDs that may send shrapnel through the side of their humvee and kill/maim in very small doses, but the suffering grows little by little as the timeframe increases.

(Here I'll be very careful to avoid expanding the scope):

Winning a war is (by definition) breaking the will of the enemy. The distaste of the US populace for the horrors of war necessitated the narrative of smart bombs and technologically-driven victory. The reality of nation building is far less glamorous, and the stress of war often brings out an ugly side of human nature.

Suppose the American public sees American soldiers laying waste to journalists, striking deals with the ISI, renditioning captives to Syria, conducting political assassinations, and generally undertaking all of the ugly tradeoffs of a protracted nation building exercise... this isn't exactly the stuff of Top Gun. A few close up shots of blown off limbs, stories about cruelty, and lack of measurable success may turn the tide of support for the war, thus breaking our will to keep fighting and leading to defeat.

All this assumes that the stated goals of the conflict (defeating the Taliban and ushering in an era of tolerance and women's rights in Afghanistan) match the actual goals.

What are the actual goals? The geopolitics of the conflict are ancient, and George Friedman has written about them extensively, and I'm sympathetic to his explanation.

Rather than (in the newspeak of our conflict) "stabilizing" Afganistan and Iraq, it is the US goal to destabilize them (by preventing the natural accretion of a major local power).

So how do you get a populace of comfortable Americans to support a protracted nation building exercise intended to destabilize an entire region? Simple: Come up with a good story. This is, I think, why Wikileaks poses such a threat (and why I think it's so important). There has been a decades long effort to build the propaganda story behind these wars, and they are necessary for the US's continued domination.

I think it follows from this, incidentally, that terrorism (asymmetrical warfare with a focus on symbolic targets) will be an increasing reality for the US as it becomes increasingly impossible to engage in a traditional war with the US due to its power.

It's a much broader question whether the actions of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq will decrease terrorism (I think they are bound to increase it). I also think it's appropriate to question the policy of the US of being involved in the middle east whatsoever.

We (as US voters) are all responsible for the totalitarian regimes sponsored by the US and for the loss of life our destabilization effort has caused. Thus, I think Wikileaks provides a truly valuable resource as it helps weaken the extremely grand story we've been told for decades about US involvement in the middle east.

I view the US reliance upon secrecy and propaganda as a very substantial cog in the war machine, and I do not by default consider our middle east involvement remotely moral (thought admittedly I am not prepared to say I consider it all utterly immoral).

I realize I've brought in a few other concepts, and you may deem them insufficiently related to warrant reply, but I'd be curious about your thoughts nonetheless.