This conversation has wandered a bit, nothing unusual.

Certainly most here can find something to complain about in US foreign policy, though different people will have different complaints. I don't see how that can be laid at the door of the military: foreign policy is an executive function. The military may have some debatable degree of influence, but responsibility lies with the executive branch. I can't see any instance in which one could state with any certainty that policy would be different if the military had taken a more aggressive role, nor do I think the military taking an aggressive role in the formulation of foreign policy would necessarily be a good thing. Like Fuchs, I believe the only thing worse than a military under civilian control is a military not under civilian control, and thus under no control at all.

The citation in the original post seemed to complain that the claim that the US military is the strongest that has ever existed is inconsistent with that military's performance in recent COIN campaigns. I don't see any inconsistency there. The US military is by any objective standard the most powerful military force that has ever existed. Not all goals are achievable through the application of military force, though, and recent campaigns are evidence of that.

Certainly the US military has its share of weaknesses, defects, and inefficiencies. Some of these are common to almost any large bureaucratic organization. It is perhaps some saving grace that the potential peer competitors have similar problems: the overt corruption in the Chinese and Russian military is as severe an obstacle to performance as anything afflicting the US.

I still think the equivocal results in COIN campaigns are attributable less to military deficiencies (though they certainly exist) than to policy errors. I see no reason why American forces should be taking a primary role in any fight against another country's insurgents. If we need to assist a government in a fight against insurgents, fine: that's why we have Special Forces. It's not something to be undertaken lightly, but it something we've some capacity to do. Sending our own forces to fight another country's insurgencies is something to be avoided in almost any case. Fighting insurgents is a fundamental governance function, and it is not our place to be taking on fundamental governance functions in other countries. That's a recipe for a mess, for reasons RC Jones has explained many times.

Our government has a hammer. It's not a perfect hammer in any way, but it's better than anyone else's hammer. If the government chooses to employ the hammer as a screwdriver, we shouldn't blame the resulting mess entirely on the hammer.