Has the American objective of this war been to exhaust the Russians until they give up and go home (Therein Willy OAM’s insistence on defining it as an attritional war? Eastern Front Collapse | Kursk Offensive – Optics, Strategy & Reality – Ukraine Map & News Update (youtube.com))? If so, we need to seek evidence that the Russians are wearing out. I’m not seeing it. They did wear out in Afghanistan, it is true, and I’m willing to say that Afghanis engaged a successful strategy of attrition against Russians (as against British and then against Americans). Ukraine is a lot more important to Russians than Afghanistan was.
Clausewitz (and plenty of other military writers before and after, including me) advise that slowly exhausting a stronger foe (husbanding resources, using hit-and-run tactics, sabotage, etc.) can be a valid choice for action and inaction given some circumstances. But exhausting one’s own resources at faster rate than the enemy’s? Not so much. Have the Germans ever been worn down in war? The French? The Ottomans? the Austrians? Yes, all of them have. Are they being worn down in this one? Probably.
Just because Clausewitz described an approach to warfare available to a contestant doesn’t make it a good idea. If the objective of a war is just to wear the other guy out, then there is a good chance that purpose has been confused with method. Let’s say for a moment of argument that the purpose of this war is rather territorial and the method hopeful-attritional. If that is the case, then I would say that the territory in question was never consequential to US security or to its treat obligations, and that the method has been wasteful beyond unethical.