Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[Steve Blair]

As our interventional failures are known and proven all over the world and not just in the Philippines, why do we keep doing it so badly? Our poor methodology provides little to no success at great cost.

I would posit that one of the reasons is that our interventions are often motivated by emotion and not necessarily long-term calculation. Combine that with a deliberately unstable political system and a military that tends to reject learning and lessons, and you get a bad mix.