As to the main issue
The US military is an awesome, almost too amazing to contemplate, instrument when used appropriately.
It's also a wasteful overly bureaucratic and weirdly managed (within and without) machine.
Both are true at the same time. It's possible for both to be true and that complicates discussion.
I was studying for my medical specialty boards when 9-11 occurred. I never gave a thought to the military in any way in my entire life up to that point. I had cut off my cable television in order to study and never saw any images contemporaneously. Never, until years and years later. Just never wanted to watch or look. I heard everything on radio.
Prior to toppling the Taliban, there was a huge argument, that the US would get bogged down. But what people meant is that we would never initially topple the Taliban. I remember those articles and pundits talking on the radio like yesterday because I happened also to be intensely studying and it all stuck, the genodermatoses and quotes of various officials and military, all in my magpie brain.
The initial removal of the Taliban did shock and amaze, it happened so quickly. To say otherwise is to rewrite history. To completely rewrite it.
But what happened afterwards? That's a group effort, Iraq, complacency, NATO and ISAF and the US military and governance and public opinion, American and otherwise, and the whole messy lot of it.
All that the "international system" had built up intellectually after world war II came out in the desire to re-wire an entire society, it came out from the UN and aid agencies and Brussels and DC and various international capitals....
Like I said, a different kind of Marshall Plan.
So, used appropriately, you are beyond gifted as a military. The trick is to do it properly.
Fuchs makes a good point about "tricking" bureaucracies and this is where the whole disruptive thinkers debate comes in and my comments about lobbies are not entirely inappropriate.
But how?
Bookmarks