The largest military the world has ever known was recklessly used towards a foe against decades of internal warning not to go there. People on both sides who didn't ask for this war paid with their lives.

High gas prices might have been a great cause for it ending, but the win for the world is that a escalation towards WWIII was averted, and that even idiotic leaders have learned that the world is a complex system and there's no such thing as a far away war anymore.