So, we are pulling out of Afghanistan?

When you put it like that, it makes more sense for him to be praying on America's hopes to end the war just for political gain in the election. "simply pulling out of an area does not make the war over" is a great statement, and exactly right. He uses that term to lure people into assuming the "war will be over"

Thank you, and it will have the effect of luring people. We all know that certain people hear what they want to hear, so a pullout may sound like an end to war. Staying with the WW2 thing, the allies could have "pulled-out" of Poland, and the fighting would have stopped there, but the war may have continued and Poland could have been part of Germany. That's not winning a war, it's conceding defeat. Then there is the issue of leaving a destabilized country. We know from history that the Soviets fought in Afghanistan for 10 years with over 1,000,000 Afghan deaths, then they pulled out. Now that left over ordinance is being used to make IEDs. It's never really been a stable place. And if the reason for the war was to eradicate Osama Bin Laden, well that objective was reached a year ago, and in Pakistan. War is never pretty, sometimes it's necessary, but does anyone ever really win? Sure you may change the course of a country by force, but what about the lives lost doing it?