In Afghanistan, the Two-Generation War --- Alongside the hardened veterans in the U.S. troops are young rookies who are eager to fight --- World War II ended in victory parades. Korea ended in stalemate. The Vietnam War ended in controversy, neatly captured in 1971 by veteran John Kerry (now secretary of state) when he posed the rhetorical question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- The coming end of conventional combat operations in Afghanistan, after 13 years of fighting, doesn't resemble any of these models. Fought by an all-volunteer military, the war still draws young men who want to test themselves in combat, led by men who have already seen more than they sometimes care to remember. -- First Platoon of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment is a rarity in Afghanistan, one of the last conventional U.S. units still hunting for insurgents. --- The U.S. and its allies have closed, bulldozed or handed off to the Afghans all but about 70 of the 852 bases and outposts they held at the war's peak. American troops now number roughly 30,000, down from a high of 100,000. President Barack Obama has announced that he intends to leave 9,800 in the country after the end of the year, if the incoming Afghan president agrees. -- U.S. casualties have fallen dramatically as Afghan government forces have taken over the bulk of the fighting. In 2010, 499 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, the largest single-year toll of the war. So far this year fewer than 40 have died here. (Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan since 2001 number more than 2,300.) -- Still, Afghanistan remains an unpredictable and dangerous place for international forces—a fact reinforced this week when an Afghan soldier opened fire at a military school in Kabul, killing U.S. Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55, of Schenectady, N.Y. He is now the highest-ranking American fatality of the war. The attacker wounded more than a dozen other Afghan and allied officers. -- Today, most U.S. conventional troops stay on relatively secure bases and do little fighting. On an average day, allied forces conduct just two dozen patrols, compared with hundreds of daily missions during the troop surge ordered up by Mr. Obama between 2010 and 2012. - More, WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-afghanistan-the-two-generation-war-1407515418