An "Exceptional” Failure: The US Military Bombs in the Twenty-First Century

[eridani]

Seems to me that the biggest cause of failure is to fail to define what "victory" actually means in the first place before use of force.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/08/exceptional-failure-us-military-bombs-twenty-first-century

It was a hell of a dream, with an emphasis on hell. It would, in fact, prove a nightmare of the first order, and the cameras just kept rolling and rolling for nearly 13 years while (I think it’s time for an acronym here) the FFFIHW, also known as the Finest Fighting Force etc., etc., proved that it could not successfully:

*Defeat determined, if lightly armed, minority insurgencies.

*Train proxy armies to do its bidding.

*Fight a war based on sectarian versions of Islam or a war of ideas.

*Help reconstruct a society in the Greater Middle East, no matter how much money it pumped in.

*Create much of anything but failed states and deeply corrupt ruling elites in the region.

*Bomb an insurgent movement into surrender.

*Drone-kill terror leaders until their groups collapsed.

*Intervene anywhere in the Greater Middle East in just about any fashion, by land or air, and end up with a world in any way to its liking.

[raouldukelives]

1. The author is working under the assumption this was by mistake.

When you understand its about making money, and nothing else, its been quite the success story.

Perpetual sales of our old arms to the ME, perpetual trickle down to enemies, perpetual war, perpetual jobs building and using the newest and most improved killing technology we can devise against them and perpetual wealth for those invested all the way around.

[Lurks Often]

2. That is failure at the political level

It is virtually impossible to defeat insurgents as long as they have safe havens in other countries and are supplied by "neutral" countries in the case of elements of the Pakistani military and government in Afghanistan and Iran in Iraq.