In short: War costs a lot of money. The longer you wage war for, the more money it costs and the more demoralized your men get (e.g. Alexander the Great's men demanding to go home). Don't wage it for longer than you can help it or you will go broke. Going broke is bad because you will need to raise taxes. Raising taxes will impoverish you country. Impoverishing your country will reduce its ability to wage war.
Even back in the day, Sun Tzu recognized that the daily cost of war was ridiculous.The amount of money being poured into Iraq and Afghanistan today is ridiculous. One sketchy site says that the state of Indiana alone has paid $15.9 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
Sun also touched on supply lines and shipping supplies. While it is much more speedy and streamlined nowadays, this still costs mucho dinero. The instruction of foraging off the enemy's food was all well and good back then, but somehow I don't think that stealing turnips from the local Iraqis will win us this war. A war against an insurgency plays by different rules, so the whole 'use the enemy's supplies' is more or less obsolete since cannot use the locals' supplies without their permission and we are more apt to destroy captured insurgency supplies than use them.
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