Just a little note to the president who told ABC news that “victory” is not the goal in Afghanistan because “I'm always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” Apparently your grandfather wasn’t there for the Japanese surrender, and thus didn’t take you on his knee when you were a child to teach you all about it. So here’s a little history lesson: See that guy in the picture signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri? Well, he’s not the Emperor Hirohito, he’s Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu ... unless maybe that's the emperor over there on the right holding Shigemitsu's top hat.

Maybe if you’d actually study some history, as your predecessor did, voraciously, you’d learn that victory is the only honorable goal in war.